Monthly Archives: March 2010

Top Ten Influential Books

Posted on March 28, 2010
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Two days ago, I read an entry in one of the NYT blogs in which the author mentions of a meme going around the blog world, listing the “ten books which have most influenced your world view”. In light of the recent entry on my favorite romantic movies, I decided to join the party. The books listed below chalk the evolution of my arrival at my current world view and not the ten books that best describe my current world view. Here is my list of ten books that have led me to my current world view, in chronological order.

  • Chariots of the Gods by Erich Von Daniken: One day, I was nestled happily in the laps of the Hindu gods and the rituals of a Brahmin life, and the next day I was squirming. This book was the cause. I was 15 and I had read no non-fiction work till this book. I was full of myself and the power of god in class one day and a friend challenged me with ideas from this book. Intrigued, I bought a copy and my skepticism took root. God and religion withered away over time, I stopped accepting things told to me by my elders as the truth. Of course, the next casualty of my skepticism was the central idea espoused by this book.
  • One, Two, Three…Infinity by George Gamow: This book awakened me to the world of serious books. A friend of my father lent it to me, taking pity on my ravings about Daniken. The power of science and the scientific method blasted away the foundation of everything I harbored and made me reconsider my world view. I no longer needed god to appreciate the beauties of the natural world. But with this book, I realized that gazing at the stars was in of itself a spiritual experience.
  • The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand: Even if nothing else of Rand’s philosophy or ideas remain intact in my world view today, this was the book that opened my mind to the subject of philosophy. A friend in my undergraduate degree recommended the book seeing my interest in books like Dancing Wu-Li Masters and Tao of Physics. I read and reread the book, consumed by the ideas. I wanted to be Roark, I fancied myself to be Roark.
  • To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee: Raised on a steady diet of superheroes (mythological and modern) since I was kid, I considered Rand’s characters to be the more realistic, grown up versions of those superheroes. Shanthala’s favorite book, the key message to me was about heroism: heroic acts are simple acts in daily life, neither trumpeted by powerful Beethovenian music nor necessarily leading to glory and fortune. And they’re performed by people sometimes that you wouldn’t look twice at on the street. Atticus Finch was not the hero of my childhood, but he is of my adult life. And for the first time, I understood the butchery and savagery of slavery.
  • Burning All Illusions by David Edwards: It took over ten years between the last one and this one. In a similar vein to the previous books, this book blew out the foundations of my old world-view – a Randian world view – and opened my eyes to a whole new world. The meaning of success, the myth of objective news and objective history, consumerism and critiques of a whole slew of mainstream life found their way out through the door that this book opened. The author also introduced me to the ideas of Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Erich Fromm among others.
  • Friends and Enemies, Our Need To Love and Hate by Dorothy Rowe: I picked this book from the British Public Library in Bangalore when we lived there a few years back. She said: “All of us yearn for a better society. Only when we recognize how we make sense of the world around us will we truly be able to reach towards it.” A popular and influential Australian psychologist, she’s virtually unheard of in this country. She explained the working of our mind – the need to tell stories, create meaning structures, the psychological immune system – lucidly and powerfully.
  • A Green History of the World by Clive Ponting: Ecology, environment, geography and the role they played in the construction of the modern world as we know it. While Jared Diamond wrote a more accessible exposition of some of the same ideas, Diamond’s book doesn’t match this one in scope and in understanding of the consequences. And this was published a few years before Diamond’s work.
  • The Evolution Wars by Michael Ruse: I knew about the theory of evolution, but was puzzled by the intensity of attacks by the Creationists. I turned to this book – just plucked it from the library shelves from among the many – for some answers. For the first time, the power of evolution became clear to me. Evolution demoted god to “by the way” and that scared a lot of people in this country. Hindus who say that they have nothing to fear from evolution because their god is wise and invented evolution, haven’t understood the theory well. With evolution, god is relegated to non-existence, to a pointless argument, similar to how many angels can dance on a pinhead. The book also provided valuable insights into the history of the theory and further illuminated the power of the scientific method (it can self-correct racial bias, for example).
  • Our Babies, Ourselves by Meredith Small: Everything I’ve so far practiced as a parent, I learned from this book. It is not a parenting manual as much as an understanding of babies and birth from evolutionary and cross-cultural point of view. Issues such as co-sleeping, the nature of a baby’s cry and many other aspects were illuminated in a way that no other book has matched for succinctness or clarity.
  • Strangers to Ourselves by Timothy Wilson: We have two selves: the conscious and the unconscious and we cannot access the unconscious very well, but it drives us far more than we understand. The unconscious is not the Freudian version, but an altogether different one. I’ll have more to say about this book separately. Like most of the other books in the list, complex ideas are simply and lucidly explained.

Lots of critical ideas ranging from ideas about love to non-violence, Descartes’ various errors from the mind-body dualism to the false separation of emotion from reason are not listed here because I encountered them either in some of these books or in some essay or part of a not-as-impressive work. The books I have listed are sometimes not even the seminal books, but books that I came across by chance, but were excellent synthesis of the ideas.

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Bangalore Impressions, Part 2: Yin and Yang

Posted on March 27, 2010
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In India, I find the yin and yang of life constantly in my face: the ancient squalor amongst the new, shining, tall apartments; the garish movie posters that celebrate sentimental love and outrageous violence side by side; the intricate twining of the wild and the tamed; the weak infrastructure and the strong economy; the hunger and yearning in the eyes of most and the satiated look of the wealthy few. The difference between being a beggar and driving a Mercedes, between pushing a cart all day when you’re 60 to survive and blowing up Rs.10,000 for your son’s birthday when you’re only 30, between starving for a morsel and having all you can eat for Rs.100, between living amongst filth and ramshackle structures and in mansions that rival the West, between being a monk and a free market enthusiast, between being a rat in the jaws of a hawk and being the hawk, all seems so arbitrary that believing in god seems logical. There but for the grace of you, go I. Fate and destiny seem more powerful than free will and conscious action in India.

In the US, I find it easy to turn a blind eye to the way we live and the way most Indians live. In our suburban neighborhoods, I find it easy to think 4 bedroom single family homes with 2 cars is not an aspiration, some lofty goal, but just the basic human right, to be denied it is unthinkable; easy to lose perspective and vent over some trifle like the cell phone coverage of AT&T; easy to dismiss as aberrations the men I see every now and then holding a sign that says “Broke Nam Vet” or “Hungry Vet, Will Work for Food” with labels such as “alcoholic” or “drug addict”. Instead of thinking how millions of us executing the same life choices that I make leads to such broken men, I think how right Gordon Lightfoot was when he sang “See the soldier with his gun, who must be dead to be admired”. One of the haunting images from Lisbon that I still bear is the sight of a street musician whose dog sat on its haunches holding a small bowl in its mouth labeled “alms”. My first thought was about the plight of the dog, not the man. Am I a misanthrope, I still wonder.

I remember a quote from the classic history of the 20th century, Eric Hobsbawm’s “The Age of Extremes” that sums up my confusion, my agitation when I visit India. Julio Caro Baroja, a Spanish anthropologist says: “There’s a patent contradiction between one’s own life experience – childhood, youth, old age passed quietly and without major adventures – and the facts of the twentieth century … the terrible events which humanity has lived through”.

And when I feel despair, I remember Derrick Jensen’s quote, from an article about the state of the Earth, published in The Orion magazine, back in 2006: “I am a complex enough being that I can hold in my heart the understanding that we are really, really fucked, and at the same time that life is really, really good. I am full of rage, sorrow, joy, love, hate, despair, happiness, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and a thousand other feelings. We are really fucked. Life is still really good.”

I often wonder, how can I explain to Maya this schism between what her life is like (hopefully our good fortune extends to her) and what she sees around her when she’s in India. And when she asks what have I done to reduce the schism, what will I say ? What will I have done ?

These thoughts resurge powerfully each time I visit India.

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Bangalore: Impressions of A Visit, Part 1

Posted on March 21, 2010
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Our recent visit to Bangalore had its usual share of groans: the twice-a-day power cuts, water in the taps only every other day, the urban sprawl, the unbridled materialism, the dirt, the crowds, the never-on-time trains and on and on. I don’t want to dwell on those. Instead, let me tell you about pleasant surprises that I encountered on the streets of Bangalore and its environs.

Vaibhava

An outsider visiting any Indian city is sure to be aghast at the garish movie posters plastered on every available public wall and billboard. The posters either celebrate violence – heroes engaged in various acts of violence against demonic looking villains while the heroine, in one corner, looks admiringly at the hero – or they celebrate romantic love – the heroine and hero entangled in each others arms, the heroine often scantily clad (Image from flickr, courtesy of Paul Keller).

Walls that have not suffered poster abuse are stained red with tobacco spits or brown with dust or stained with urine tracks, sometimes covered with poor, unwittingly funny English warnings such as “Do not stick posters. Stickers will be strictly prosecuted” or “Persons committing nuisance will be prosecuted” (image also courtesy of Paul Keller).

What a surprise then to be greeted with walls that looked like these.



A beautification project, called Vaibhava, is underway in Bangalore. Local artists are hired to clean the public walls, remove the eyesore posters and slogans and paint murals. The murals depict the local flora and fauna, people engaged in ancient rhythms such as agriculture and fishing, scenes from popular Indian mythologies, and the famous monuments and temples of Karnataka such as Gol Gumbaz, the temples of Belur and Halebidu, PattadaKallu and Chamundi Hills. Over 700,000 feet of walls have already been painted.

According to this report in The Hindu: ‘Mr. Kumar [one of the painters] said that they used a special weather-proof paint. The painters were all from an agency that employed them to paint banners and film posters. “We are 10 members in all and we get paid Rs. 300 every day. We should ensure that the paintings measure 10 ft x 12 ft,” he said. The initiative began on August 15, and more than 40 roads have been completed.‘

The effort is not without its share of controversy. According to this report and this report, the project was dreamed by the BBMP Commissioner and executed without consulting the citizens. There is also some hue and cry over how the painters were selected. Some people complain that murals are wrong because their existence on busy streets prevents reflective viewing. Some others complain that expert artists should’ve been hired instead of amateur local artisans. One even complained that the paintings were a distraction to drivers!

Driving around the congested streets of Bangalore is never a pleasure, but at least there is something to rest the tired eyes on.

Improved Commute

Driving around town has been somewhat faster compared to the last time. Going to a friend’s house took over an hour last year, but only 40-45 minutes this time. Going to my favorite bookstores in Bangalore’s main thoroughfare, M.G. Road, took over an hour the last time, but only 30 minutes this time. All those flyovers, constructed over the past few years to ease congestion, appear to be doing their job. In the middle of January, an almost 10 km long flyover opened, running along the road that forms one of the main IT corridors, from Central Silk Board junction to Attibele. It is a toll road, but that should hardly pose a problem to the main occupants of the road, employees of the IT industries such as Infosys and Wipro. A newspaper report that I read quoted many commuters singing paens to this opening as it cut their commute times by as much as half.

One reason for the faster commutes may also be that the public transportation in Bangalore has gotten a lot better. Buses have been the only public transport in Bangalore. Most were overcrowded, run down and rickety, remnants of a poorer time than one reflecting its current status as the Silicon Valley of India. Middle class and higher rarely used them.

This time around, a few of my friends and colleagues at my company’s Indian office say that they prefer commuting in the buses. And they’re not the only ones. A new addition to the bus fleet, popularly called Volvo buses – air conditioned and well cushioned  buses made by Volvo – protect the commuters from the dust, pollution and heat, offering a smooth, quiet ride. These buses were first introduced as transportation to the new international airport, but have since spread substantially because of their popularity. I traveled twice in these buses and was impressed by the quality of the
ride. Many buses are equipped with power outlets for laptops or cellphone chargers. To top that, they’re not too expensive, about Rs.10 or Rs. 20 a ride, making it affordable even for many non-IT professionals (they’re of course, way too expensive for a significant majority of the people).

In keeping up with the times, the buses are starting to be equipped with GPS and can be tracked from a website. The same website also offers traffic updates and live camera feeds from various busy city junctions.

Some interesting tidbits about the public transportation in Bangalore, culled from Wikipedia (can you even compare, Britannica, for providing such information ?):

  • Bangalore Metropolitan Transportation Corporation is one of the few consistently profitable public sector undertakings in Asia.
  • The longest city bus route in India is in Bangalore, traversing 117 kms from end to end.

Namma Metro

Construction doesn’t seem to ever stop in Bangalore. Buildings, roads, flyovers. Some prominent thing or the other, is always coming up. A few years back, the roads were partly choked by the construction of flyovers. While the construction of flyovers seems to have reduced significantly, the construction of the new metro public transit, Namma Metro, has taken over from the flyovers, and in places, with even greater vengeance. The roads around my parents house are choked because a significant middle section of the road has been taken over by the metro construction.

The metro is scheduled to open for service towards the end of 2011. It runs on an elevated track in most of the places, instead of the usual underground system popular with most metros. When I drove to M.G. Road, I took some pictures of the metro as a significant portion has been completed there and will be the first section to open.


When the metro launches, the expected daily ridership is estimated to be 1 million a day! The metro track runs a total of 42.3 kms, with 18.1 kms for the East-West track and 24.2 for the North-South track. Majestic continues to be the transportation hub of Bangalore: it is where the North-South and East-West tracks meet.

The sad consequence of all this improvement, especially the flyovers and the metro, is the large scale felling of trees. Old city squares such as Minsk square, which looked like they belonged to a medium sized, sleepy town in India, now resemble modern urban landscapes of Asia, their lush, verdant cover gone. Bangalore, called the Garden City, was covered with trees, making the streets look like cosy boulevards. The trees protected the city from the heat and kept its temperatures mild and very alluring, a big reason why the city became the IT mecca of the country. With the trees gone, the summers have started to become oppressive. Though promises have been made that the city squares will be restored to their original glory once the work has been completed, I wonder how can such old growth large trees will be replaced any time soon ?

Reading a poem called “The Resignation” by J.D.McClatchy, I remembered the trees that are with us no more:

They seem to lean
On the light, unconcerned with what the world
Makes of their decencies, and will not show
A jealous purchase on their length of days.
To never having been loved as they wanted
Or deserved, to anyone’s sudden infatuation
Gouged into their sides, to all they are forced
To shelter and to hide, they have resigned themselves.

Bangalore is a city on the move. From its origins as a remote outpost of a South Indian kingdom to its current status as India’s third largest city, the city has been radically altered by each successive ruler. Kempegowda was the first to alter the landscape, building a fort and a temple around 1537. He also built a number of water resorvoirs, called tanks. Hyder Ali and his son Tippu Sultan, renowned kings of Mysore, set about the next major alteration, building the largest garden in Bangalore, Lalbagh. Over the course of the 19th century, the British made the next set of major alterations, adding a separate, British-only section to the city, the Cantonment, and the other popular landmark of the city, Cubbon Park. At the beginning of the 20th century, Bangalore became the first city in India to be electrified and staked its claim as the Garden City of India with a series of beautification projects. And now at the beginning of the 21st, the flyovers and upcoming metro have altered the landscape again.

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Meeting Winter’s End By Stevens Creek Trail

Posted on March 14, 2010
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Running the Stevens Creek Trail is beautiful this time of the year. Especially this year. The rains have been aplenty and the creek is swollen with the bounty. The normally burbling creek is roaring. The water is gray, flecked white where it tumbles over some rocks or over drops in the creek floor.

Wild blue elderberry is in blossom and dots the trail in many places.

Since our return from India, I’ve returned to running the trail a
little more regularly. Last week, I finally ran three times, something
I haven’t done in a long time. I ran 7 miles one day and 7.5 miles the
day after.

When I first ran the trail last year with Maya, she hadn’t even begun to walk. This year, she is running and walking with ease. I let her down at the turnaround point and let her have a little run. There are two steep side trails, with loose soil and pebbles to make it a little slippery, that take us closer to the creek. Maya ran up and down the steep sections, not even accepting my hand for support.

One section had large pools of water across the trail. Maya carefully navigated the sections, inching her way along the side that was dry till she was completely across. “Good job, Maya!” she shouted exuberantly when she crossed the last pool.

A couple of mallards swam furiously away and Maya cried out happily, “Quack quack. Quack quack”.

The day I snapped these pictures, the sky was an intense blue. Though the sun was out, there was a bite in the air. But the bite will soon be gone. As will the roar, and then the creek itself will dry up all the way to the bay. When they’re back, Maya will be a year older, maybe even running sections of the trail with me. I stand still for a while with Maya, staring at the creek, trying to hold time, knowing full well it cannot be held, only lived.

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My Top 5 Romantic Movies

Posted on March 6, 2010
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Shanthala and I watched High Fidelity Wednesday night. Again. We had watched the movie a few years back in the theaters, when it was first released. I had loved the movie and Shanthala had found it passable. I couldn’t understand her reaction. We had cuddled up to the same romantic movies so far and yet here we were, disagreeing about this one, one that I considered pretty high on my all time favorite movie list. She didn’t offer any reasons for her dislike.

A unique blend of music and falling in love, the movie had me from the very first lines:

“What came first ? The music or the misery ? People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands – literally thousands – of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. Did I listen to music because I was miserable ? Or was I miserable because I listened to music ?“

On Wednesday, Shanthala wanted to watch the movie again. She was reading the book by Nick Hornby that the movie was based on and said that she could now understand my crush on the movie. And finally last night, the movie stole her heart too.

Inspired by the top 5 lists constantly conjured up by the character played by John Cusack, I asked Shanthala to name her top five romantic movies. Her list, one short, (she was never good at making top 5 lists, while I wallowed in them like the main character) in no particular order :

Rangeela
Say Anything
Forget Paris
Notting Hill

Except for Forget Paris, alas, we didn’t share a common movie. My list, not ordered either :

Before Sunrise
Before Sunset
High Fidelity
Forget Paris
Brief Encounter

with consolation prize awarded to Annie Hall.

I like to attribute the lack of commonality in our lists to her rather short memory about such topics and her difficulty in constructing such lists. But I do spy a logic in her selection: her selections are all upbeat movies. And I tend to like movies that capture the essence of a romance well, that showed what the attraction was about besides physical attraction, that take time to show the relationship develop, little by little, till the romance seems but a logical outcome. They may not be upbeat, but they’re somewhat more realistic. For example, I enjoyed Rangeela and Notting Hill, but they were too fantastical for my taste.

The contenders to my top five list, the ones that didn’t make it, but made a lasting impression are: Say Anything, The End of the Affair, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Bridges of Madison County, Lost in Translation, When Harry Met Sally, Nelly and Monseiur Arnaud, Scenes from a Marriage, many of Woody Allen’s and the Kannada movie, America, America.

A word must be said here about Casablanca. While we adore the movie, we both felt that a movie that celebrates the hero letting go of the heroine didn’t deserve to make the cut (and would Casablanca be Casablanca if Ilsa had stayed behind with Rick)? Shanthala and I didn’t want to just have Paris.

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