Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

The last few weeks have been awkwardly slow, eventless and tiring. I picked up this book to get lost in my own self. It only made my grief bigger.

Its the book about Elinor and Marianne - Two Dashwood sisters - left to save their vanity after their father's death. Its set in 17th century in England. The book is a great deal of "conduct lessons" for young women and mankind if not less.

Elinor is full of sense - wisdom, good judgement and realistic thinking. Marianne is full of sensibility - emotional, sensible and living in goodwill dreamland. The book is a depiction of behavioural paradigm of these two characters. One has everything concealed and the other has nothing to conceal.

The story of the book is about how the Elinor and Marianne deal with situations when they become destitute by their father's death, finding a place to live when they are asked to leave the Norland farm, finding love in Edward Ferrars and John Willoughby respectively and dealing with Brandon, heart breaks, Edward Ferrars secret engagement to Lucy Steele, Lucy affinity to Robert Ferrars, Fanny's contentious treatment, avarice sense of John Dashwood, Willoughby's deception, London visit, Edward's apologies, being ill to the state of death, the recovery from death bed, Brandon's love for Marianne and finally making up the decision to marry.

The journey is drastic and dramatic with each twist having a twitch in the readers tummy. The sense and sensibilities of the characters is life inspiring and a clearly defines what to do and what not to do. Thats why I think it stayed as the "Conduct lessons" for so many years in the history. The journey is also the depiction of socio economic conditions in the evolution time period of mankind where "Family" hood was at epitome. All through what is professed is that its not about woman or man - one has to uphold the respect for self.

The language was a bit strange to me at first but you get accustomed to it after say 50 pages. It took more than 4 weeks to read. But after those four weeks I felt like a different person altogether. Some of the best quotes in the book are -

“She was stronger alone…”

“Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience- or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.”

“To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect…”

“Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.”

“Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death.”

“It is not what we think or feel that makes us who we are. It is what we do. Or fail to do.”

“A man who has nothing to do with his own time has no conscience in his intrusion on that of others.”

“I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness. [...] Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy.”

“She was without any power, because she was without any desire of command over herself.”

“Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims.”

“I can feel no sentiment of approbation inferior to love.”

“Mine is a misery which nothing can do away.”

“Sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and meaning.”

Demise?

Since the office shifted to a new place, its been an emotional commute for me each day. I have to pass through narrow lanes and slums and the sight of people and children and their helplessness is a big deal of a thing to me.

More than the suffering of these children, I get to go around city's 3 major hospitals and the sight over there is further more heart rending. There are sick children, growth retarded, mentally ill, accident victims, ill infants being carried in tiny pouches and what not. When I look in to their eyes and the eyes of people surrounding them, I find hollowness, submission, despair, dejection, pain, hope for betterment, faith, good will, trust, assurance, reliance and confidence. To take so many visuals at once for me is not a thing of ease.

Today morning, I think there was a death of someone I dont know in the last hospital. There were grieving people but the grief had turned violent. They were bawling on the road. I did not dare to stop by to understand the reason - for I know that pain too well.

When in a calm posture now, I ask whether I fear death? I do..

DVG's lines follow.

ಬದುಕು ಜಟಕಾಬಂಡಿ,
ವಿಧಿ ಅದರ ಸಾಹೇಬ,
ಕುದುರೆ ನೀನ್,
ಅವನು ಪೇಳ್ದಂತೆ ಪಯಣಿಗರು.
ಮದುವೆಗೋ ಮಸಣಕೋ ಹೋಗೆಂದಕಡೆಗೋಡು
ಪದ ಕುಸಿಯೆ ನೆಲವಿಹುದು ಮಂಕುತಿಮ್ಮ

Finding the odd man out

This is an old game you and I are used to playing when we were all kids. This is the way to teach children to identify what is different in a set of given items or people. This helps develop children the instinct to identify anything that is not normal.

That said, I find this game such an  absurd. I have learnt to respect people for all what they are regardless of color, race, gender, vernacular background, the upbringing, cultural varieties, social, financial, political prospects, God believing, aethist, sexual orientations, environmental views, career orientation, age, physical and philosophical histories. This has come a hard way to me no matter how much my parents thought me to prefer something over other because I relate to it easily. 

I profess the same thing to my growing child and to find an odd man out in the given set of people is simply no way forward. In my thoughts, there is not a single Man who is odd on the face of earth. Everyone is different and they all come with their own individuality. You may call me narcissist. It does not matter...but everyone deserves respect by the virtue of simply being human. 

Finding the odd man out should be most contextual based like a person who is oblivious to what is happening in a meeting room or should be played with numbers like multiples of 4 accompanied with a 5. Hope the world finds more meaningful games for children to play. 

#sundaynightthoughts

Hidden Files - Prof. Triveni Singh and Amit Dubey

On LinkedIn I am friends with India's first and super cyber cop Prof. Triveni Singh Sir. He is an IPS officer who is known for cracking cyber crimes. He along with Amit Dubey who is a cyber crime investigator and cyber security speaker have teamed up to author this book by name "Hidden files". It is inspired by the real crimes they solved.

The book is a collection of short(mini tales) stories each one more thrilling than the previous one. I bought it through Kindle unlimited which is free of cost. Took about 2 nights to read them all.

One mini tale titled "Cats Murder" gave me shrills in the spine literally. Its about a small boy who plays video games and does nasty things at home. The sensational stories of SMS scams, fake job offerers, video game that detects wifi signals and determines the position of the person speaking on phone, game that captures pics of surroundings, Lover boy capturing nudity of girlfriends, marriage proposal scams are all horrifying and blood curdling.

Reading this book, one can discern the vulnerabilities we are exposed to just by connecting to internet(and otherwise). The stories are short and I assure you there is no glorification of the crime. I get to read about real life cases the professor solves on daily basis on linkedin. A man on a mission to solve every bit the cyber crime is the definition of Prof. Triveni Singh, IPS, MBA, PhD, CEH. He is an inspiration to cyber cops and to many like me. 

Midnight in Chernobyl

A while ago, when I was touring around my parents in law's home, I went to a deserted village called Borkatte near karkala. It was nearly barren with fallen tress and broken houses. At the same time I was reading this book called Midnight in Chernobyl. I could relate to the state of village of Pripyat being deserted due to nuclear blast.

The book - Midnight in Chernobyl is a documentary of events that led to the largest nuclear outage on the face of earth on April 25th 1986. That was around the time I was born and my father kept telling me stories about what happened in Chernobyl nuclear blast. Since I knew only what my father had told me, I was intrigued to fill myself with details and so I read this book.

Soviet Union assumes answers to most of the energy problems in nuclear energy. They decide the place to be Pripyat which is a small village near the regional capital Chernobyl. Victor Brukhanov a nuclear scientist is assigned to the project to build first ever atomic power plant in Ukraine from scratch. The project would cost 400 million rubles. Victor painstakingly goes through every stage of facility building to dealing with authorities and labourers.

The shape of the plant is dependent on functionality in the most economical ways the stations designers can conceive. The plant commission makes several important recommendations to develop safety regulations to protect reactors in the event of coolant loss. Recommendations to devise a faster acting emergency protection system are also made. Despite the apparent urgency, the reactor designers fail to act on any of the recommendations. Instead the Soviet Govt orders more of the reactors to be built. In the years that follow, there would be even more serious accidents in the nuclear reactors else where in the Soviet union and all of them would be covered up for the fear that it would tarnish the ostensibly spotless record of the peaceful reactor.

The key safety system of the reactor # 4 is ascertained to protect it during a blackout. The designers develop a run down unit which is the crucial safety feature of the reactor #4 and must be tested before it was approved for use in 1983. In 1986, the tests were overdue for more than 3 years and the first scheduled maintenances for the reactor #4 gave the opportunity to conduct trial in the real world conditions. From here, the things start to fall. During the test, the reactor shuts down and destroys itself. There would be a loud noise of the explosion and a mushroom like cloud blossoming in to the sky. The highest levels of emergency alerts are summoned. It is a  terrifying and apocalyptic sight and the worst is yet to come. The damaged reactor is running low on water coolant. Extinguishing fire with water is counterproductive as it burned more savagely. The blast released explosive hydrogen and radio active steam. The levels of emitting radiation was such that a man would absorb a lethal dose in less than 4 minutes.

The need for secrecy lead to the false report that the accident was something that could've been controlled and contained. The people's lives were kept at risk. After elaborate investigations, the failure of the reactor was blamed on the incompetence of the operators. There was a thick long block of wall constructed to contain the radiations as an aftermath. Its called sarcophagus. The people and directors who were penalised for the disaster were released in 1990.

25 years after the incident, the Ukrainian government decided to build a tourist center around the exclusion zone in Chernobyl. It is considered safe for short visits.

The book is a horrifying documentation of the events. I was so moved by the events that I watched the Chernobyl documentary on Netflix. The stories of Dyatlov, Victor, Alexander Yuvchenko and Nikolai Formin are heart rendering. 

The moment of lift by Melinda Gates

Melinda Gates grew up as a child in Catholic home, raised by aerospace engineer father and stay at home mother. She witnessed a number of space launches which inspired her to find the moment of lift in the human beings. Its the story of a passionate public feminist advocate who shares her experiences of travel and working with underprivileged women.

In the story, she tells about how she met Bill Gates when she was working at Microsoft. After the birth of her first child, she along with Bill establish a foundation meant to fight social inequalities. It was not Melinda's plans to work on gender issues but after realising that empowering women is the key to reduce and increase access to health care, the foundation becomes more poised in solving gender issues.

She writes that "Poverty is the most disempowering force on earth" and hence works on resolving world poverty. She then talks on working on unplanned pregnancies which is the no.1 cause of death for girls aged 14 and 21. She works on child marriages, woman working on unpaid work, gender barriers, religion biases etc in the book.

I was in the impression this is a self help book. But it is more of a autobiography. There are good advices all over the place though. The last conclusive advice goes as below.

Speak up when and where you can. This will not only help you find a safe place in your voice, but it will also improve your sense of self. Always remember you have a responsibility to yourself to speak up against every form of unfairness. Also be nice to everyone you come across as love is the ultimate bridge of life. 

Kite Runner

A very long time ago I read this book. Later I watched the movie too. Both have been classics in their own terms. This is the book that lead me to Khaled Hosseini and I read all his works back to back and now I await for the next ones.

This one is about a boy named Amir who lives with his father "baba" in Kabul, Afghanistan. He has a servant by name Ali. Ali has a son called Hassan. There is a friend of baba - Rahim Khan.  Ali and Hassan belong to hazaara which is a ethnic minority. Baba loves Hassan more than Amir or thats what Amir thinks as. There is a kite fighting festival where the boys cover their kite strings in glass and battle to sever the string of opposing kites. When a kite loses, boys chase and retrieve it. This is called kite running. When Amir wins the kite challenge, Hassan sets off to run the losing kite. Hassan is trapped in an alley with his pants down and being raped by rowdy boys named Aseef, Wali and Kamal. Amir looks on as all this happen without letting out his effort to guard Hassan. Once Hassan is out Amir looks as if he doesn't know a thing. Amir is full of guilt and wants Hassan out of his house. He stuffs money and a watch under Hassan's bed and tells baba that Hassan stole them. When baba confronts Hasaan, he admits it though he has not done a thing. Ali and Hassan move away from Amir's house.

During the war times, Afghanistan is occupied by Soviets and Amir and baba escape to California. Amir goes to college and marries a girl by name Soraya. Baba dies due to lung cancer and one day Amir gets a call from Rahim Khan to see him in Pakistan. When Amir meets him he has a favor to ask. He tells about Hassan being the natural son of baba, about his house in Kabul which was demolished by Talibans, death of Hassan and his wife, about their orphaned child Sohrab. Rahim wants Amir to pick Sohrab from orphanage in Kabul. Amir sets off to Kabul to find that there is no orphanage and Sohrab is living with Aseef where he is sexually abused. Amir and Sohrab fight Aseef and escape. Amir and Soraya find trouble in legally adopting Sohrab but eventually they do. Sohrab is shaken and do not talk to anyone. He will have problems with getting along with the new family. Once there will be a kit festival in Fremont and Amir and Soraya take him there. They fly the kite together and Sohrab smiles for the first time. 

When Sohrab smiles for the first time is when the readers also let out a tear of happiness. Its a book of great love, guilt, loyalty and submission. There is war also in the backdrop to add to the sadness of the book but its the one with profound emotion and feeling.

I read this book around 10 years back and I still remember the characters and the story and more so the emotion associated with each scene. One has to read it to understand the depth and meaning of the fact that love and guilt combined together becomes such a powerful force. 

Fist of God - Frederick Forsyth

This book is a master thriller of Frederick Forsyth. Its set during the Persian Gulf war of 1991 in the similar lines as "The Afghan".

There was a scientist named Gerald Bull who envisioned launching a satellite with a super gun kind of artillery. He designs and develops the super gun through a project called Project Babylon in Iraq. The scientist is assassinated shortly after this development. This is a real story where the scientist lived and died. You can find his details here.

Iraq invades Kuwait. The officer Mike Martin who is dark in complexion and speaks Arabic can easily infiltrate to be Afghan. He is a SAS (A British special services unit of the Army) agent. US comes in to support Kuwait and free it from Saddam's rule. The world is unable to locate or identify the weaponry that Iraq is using. Mike Martin is called in and he passes in as an Afghan to detect the super gun that Saddam has employed.

In the mean time, CIA gets the word that there is a Mossad informer in Iraq called Jerico. Again now, Martin is called in and sent to Baghdad(Iraq). Mike works as a gardener in the house of a Soviet ambassador. Mike finally gets the information about the super gun from Jerico in exchange of a hefty money. But the information is useless as it takes someone on ground to point to the weapon so that it can be hit from the air as the gun as such is hidden and camouflaged. He travels to Vienna and deal with the Mossad.

There is a lot of treachery in the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. There are gory references to torture and violence. Its intense.

Its a book thats like any other book of FF. Intense and spine chilling. Once you are on it, you can't stop till you finish or at least till you know who Jerico is. Mike Martin is kind at the same time powerful. His presence of mind saves him on occasions where is just about to die or be captured. A high adventure, high drama read. 

Spider Man - Far from Home

Tony Stark - where are you? 

The latest spider man movie post Stark's death is all about Tony Stark. Stark entrusts his own glasses to Peter Parker and it is delivered to Peter through Fury.

Meanwhile, Peter lives in a era of blip where the population is brought back to earth(from extinction) earlier than expected, Thanks to Avengers. Hence Peter is 16 and back at school where they plan a trip to Europe. He intends to express his love to his class mate MJ during the trip. There are numerous attacks on Peter and his friends while the trip is displacing from one city to other. Peter with the help from Beck saves the world. Beck is an old employee of Stark and avenges his own dismissal from employment by Stark. Peter realises this and tries to get back Stark's glasses he gave to Beck. 

The movie is light hearted high school kinds. It is a relief after the high drama of the End Game. There are no twists or turns. It is plain good vs evil. The visual effects is scintillating with drones and technology. But spider man becoming the next IRON MAN? Thats asking too much of Tom Holland.

The precious token

Some 7 years ago, my husband came in contact with a mobile phone manufacturer owner from somewhere in Nigeria. She was one of his rich patients. She loved everything my husband did to her. She was delighted. She seemed to be overly interested in my husband(to a questionable level). She gave him a smart phone(which at that time frame, was an expensive and an exquisite one) as a token of her admiration for him(or I am not sure what more was in it). Husband was thrilled. He took care of the phone like it was some precious thing he found in himalayan mountains. 

2 years later, he set his eyes on something more shiny. He moved on. This phone was rotting. My mother was phone less at the same time. So hubby darlings gave it to her as a token of gratitude for giving away her daughter to him. Her time to be delighted. She made pretty good use of it. 

Then was the turn of my father. On a eventful day, my dad's phone fell down and broke. My mother turned to philanthropy and gifted him that same phone as a token of sympathy. After an year, daddy found a newer version of his broken phone and bought it. This precious phone was once more left in the locked chest of drawers. 

My aunt is a 70 year old nagging lady with bad ears. My mother has always been affectionate about her. So she thought why not make aunt's life a little colorful. At the same time, she wanted to get rid of this phone due to decluttering at our home. She gifted her the precious phone as a token of "get lost" to both the phone and her. 

My aunt had been ecstatic about the whole new thing. She learnt to whatsapp, watch videos on youtube and read e newspapers. She got in to a co live dependency on the phone. She was finally happy in life. 

7 years fast forward, she got her internet recharge and to her horror, the shop keeper said the phone does not have the sim trays(both) anymore. She reached her grand daughters but they could not find. The shop keeper had told that the sim trays were missing for 2 months and he had fixed the sims in slots using scalpel. It would no more work due to slot expanding(due to heat or wear and tear). So came back the precious phone to my home. 

Husband had fuzzy reactions. He tormented himself in lookout for the sim trays. He travelled to nook and corner of the city and met expert technicians. No answers! He bought a new phone to aunt and kept the precious phone to himself as a token of "making peace with the past".