Too Busy To Read Books?

The first list is of the books which are rusting on my book shelf from very long time. I have to finish them as soon as possible. The other books are in the list which I will finish one day. I have also put the name of person who recommonded me name of the books directly or virtually.

Books Rusting on the Shelf

Stay Hungry Stay Foolish by Rashmi Bansal --- Sonal Rai

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwelll --- Sonal Rai

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair --- Self

Diary by Chuck Palahniuk --- Shubhank

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger --- Shekhar Iyer

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowel --- Sonal Rai

Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau --- Self

Selected Short Stories by Franz Kafka --- Self

The Renaissance in India and other essays by Aurbindo Ghosh --- Self

Thus spake Zarathustra by F. Nietzsche --- Rajneesh


Books to be bought & read in future

Our Films, Their Films by Satyajit Ray --- Nitesh Rohit

Something Like An Autobiography by Akira Kurosawa --- Nitesh Rohit


India After Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha --- Rahul Basu

India: From Midnight to the Millennium by Shashi Tharoor --- Self

How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond by Pankaj Mishra --- Self

A Journey Interrupted: Being Indian in Pakistan by Farzana Versey --- Vikram V Garg

The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991 by Eric Hobsbawm --- Self


Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker --- Brajesh Rai

The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman --- Madhur Garg

The Google Story by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed --- Rahul Priyedarshi

The Creation Of Wealth : The Tatas From The 19th To The 21st Century by R M Lala --- Self

The Amul India Story by Ruth Herediya --- Self

Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts by P Sainath --- Self


A Better India, A Better World by N R Narayana Murthy --- Self

Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani --- Self

A Time Of Transition by Mani Shankar Aiyar --- Puneet Jain

Ignited Minds by Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam --- Self

The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen --- Rahul Priyedarshi


On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King --- Steve Yegge

The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto 'Che' Guevara --- Vivek Padmanabhan

Sunny Days by Sunil Gavaskar --- Self

The Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett --- Self



Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut --- Self

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley --- Ankita Mukherjee

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink --- Self

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn --- Self

The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol --- Jhumpa Lahiri

White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky --- Rajneesh

Faint Heart by Fyodor Dostoyevsky --- Rajneesh

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho --- Srikant Singh

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky --- Self

On the Road by Jack Kerouac --- Self

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates --- Self

Snow by Orhan Pamuk --- Shekhar Iyer

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller --- Shekhar Iyer

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk --- Shekhar Iyer

Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho --- Puneet Jain


Peeli Chhatri Waali Ladki by Uday Prakash --- Varun Grover

Kasap by Manohar Shyam Joshi --- Self

In custody by Anita Desai --- Self

Tamas by Bhisham Sahni --- Mother

Pinjar by Amrita Pritam --- Mother

Aag Ka Dariya by Qurratulain Hyder --- Self

Kitne Pakistan by Kamleshwar --- Self

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky --- Ankita Mukherjee

Like a flowing river by Paul Coehlo --- Puneet Jain


Discover Your Genius by Michael Gelb --- Nimmy

What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson --- Rashmi Bansal

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig --- Zaheer Sir


Evolution of Geographical Thought by Majid Hussain --- Neeraj Jadaun


The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins --- Shubhank

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins --- Shubhank

The End of Faith by Sam Harris --- Self


Tao, The Golden Gate [1] & [2] by Osho --- Rajneesh Tiwari

Satyarth Prakash by Swami Dayanand Saraswati --- Self

The Life Divine by Aurobindo Ghose --- Self

God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History by Stephen
Hawking --- Puneet Jain

Cast out Caste

Let me recall the punchline of Popeye the Sailorman : “That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!” . Cast out caste from our social system, it is killing talent based on the merit. The paragraphs given below are the the reproduction of a part of the interview of N. Murthy , Infosys Founder.

" The Indian society is a society of ideas. It is a society that has revered talk. In this society, articulation is mistaken for accomplishment. We are quite satisfied with our voice, with our writings. This is not a society that is focused on execution.

Frankly, the problem is due to our caste system and the dominance of Brahmins in our society for long period. The Brahminical system said my job is to think of the higher worlds. My job is to think of connecting you people with God. I don't want to do anything that has a relationship with the real world.

Now that is a problem that has played havoc with the Indian culture. So, here in this culture, if you do anything with your hands, it is considered less honourable that anything to do with your brain. Here everybody wants to be an engineer, nobody wants to be a technician. So when a society does not value implementation, execution, what happens is you create more and more reports and nothing gets done. "

We are not a nation of doers; we are a nation which believes that our articulation is our accomplishment.

I have put the view of N Murthy here for the gentle support of Anoop who put it eloquently as: Indian academicians and intellectuals are not ‘lazy’ but highly incompetent as they are the product of a society where merit is at premium. A caste-ridden society, where the caste interest and caste-pride take precedence over everything, can never produce genuine/objective scholars and academicians. Then, Anoop puts his emphasis on the fact --- Why have the Brahmins not produced a Voltaire? . Don't worry about my bashing to priestly clan of Hinduism, here comes Interview of Prabhas Joshi with his really valid points to give thoughts of other side of coin.

Apne hi pani mein pighal jana barf ka muqaddar hota hai.

I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks. I am doing this job but I am unable to understand if I am really doing the job or it is just for the sake of doing something. Confusion is there and no direction is clear to me. I am unable to decipher to whom I should take advice. This post is gentle expression of my wrath on me and everything.

Currently, I am unable to express myself here. It may sound like some idealistic and impractical but its not road map of utopia, it is mine day dream of the happy world. Read Bhagat Singh's India for more glimpses of true feelings buzzing around my head. It is more review of history of my country, on whose base our future will be written.

Every monumental crisis shakes the people and society of each generation. The art, literature, cinema matures from it. Every unjust decision pushes us in the direction of becoming more fearful, more regressive; and surely there is always enough time for us to undo old injustice. America emerged stronger and richer after the second world war, while Europe lay in ruins, "the great American dream" had no rivals anywhere in the world. Gertrude Stein once said: America was the oldest country in the world since it was the first to be modern. With its wealth, unique inventions and distinctive "way of life", the US had shaped the experience of western modernity.

India is a diverse and dual society with islands of elite affluence amidst vast oceans of poverty of the masses. This poverty is primarily due to inadequate income-generating employment in the rural countryside and employment would not come from capital-intensive industrialization. Indian science and technology has allied itself with the elitist pattern of industrialization from the west. The need of hour is to devote itself to the generation of an alternative pattern of capital-saving labour-intensive technologies of relevance to the rural poor.

Today, India is just copying American lifestyle without seeing its consequences of implication. I am just requesting all of you to change the world by sacrificing your little luxuries for the needs of others. The others are not from the alien lands, they are our brothers and sisters only. You will know my point after going through an old interview of this year Magsaysay Award winner in the field of Community Leadership, Deep Joshi. Worth Reading for all engineering guys as this person is passout of MNNIT, Allahabad & MIT.

Noel Hatch once commented that for people like us only: "So go where the people are - adapt the messengers, not the message. Don't take them for granted, value them as people you can't do without. Expect to be surprised by them, they're the people you've been waiting for. Share your success and they will commit even more. Embrace the mess, you need rules for radicals not robots. Don't just make it blood, sweat & tears, give them leadership and a smile. Don't just get people on your dance floor, get them to run the show and they'll join your revolution. "

As the topic header "Apne hi pani mein pighal jana barf ka muqaddar hota hai " shows that the path of salvation of an individual goes through welfare of his family, community and society. My inspiration is for making India as place free of prejudices and discrimination where everyone can get the chance to raise his voice.

The history of writing

Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow. — Some dude.

I was really flattered when Rajneesh pinged personally and congratulated me for this blog-post in which I stated about my feeling of loneliness. For a mediocre guy like me, to produce magic of ecstasy for friends through written words give intense pleasure. I have frozen frame of the moment in my memory when Himanshu Gupta applauded me for enjoying a healthy and detailed chat on diverse topics. Topic started with him explaining about science in a movie AI to me and continued 3 hours at the lobby of Morvi Hostel (IT-BHU). A sense of confidence was born from inside. It is one the most encouraging memory to cherish till this date.

I always go slow and hate the stopwatch mentality of the world. Deadlines drives me crazy and nervous till this date. The line between an intellectual and a pretentious bore is at best thin. Hence, I feared much in expressing myself. I was like sponge as a kid soaking all in it. Hence, there was so much to tell to this world. Wisdom is learned by 3 ways in the life: Reflection, Imitation and Experience. Imitation gives only outer shell. Experience is most bitter of all. Reflection is the best in all learned retro/ intro - spection.

Imitation kills initiative and discourages independent thought and effort in long run. Foreign words became insufficient to express the experience and thoughts. A sense of dissent for western metaphors or simile is there inside me, as they take mine unique Desi identity and makes me more English. As English isn't my first language, expressing myself through it creates a mental hurdle of translating. Hinglish education had changed my habit of thought and scale of values. Prolonging intellectual serfdom in classic English leads me to indiscriminate adoption of alien wonts and usages. I always try to avoid it. I always like the writing of Salman Rushdie due to his use of Indian English. A sense of Desi belongs in it and English language transforms from British background to urban India. But, I can't adapt his lucid style of complex statements and have deep impact of Premchand's simplicity in Hindi. Hence, imitation way was not for me. Then, I learnt that I had to carve my own way for establishing myself.

Experience comes with passing time through reading and writing ; Advice through comments gives feedbacks of the proactive writing. The reactive comments help in knowing the minds of readers. This stage of experience writing is best expressed by me in a previous blog post.

Reflection makes you strong from inside and a crystal clear point of view appears. Take the seed idea and develop in its essence. That is called adaptation with reflection in my books. The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule or the law of the vital few) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. I think that both every distributive system follows this principle. And personal reflection is that 80% in the mine writing. It may be only small part but its effect is massive.

The three stages are always going in different proportions in writing about any topic. If something is worth writing, it is worth making it extraordinary in the nature. As John Quincy Adams rightly said: If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. So, I am creating anonymous leaders in blogland...

FYI, Abhishek Arora and Vivek Tripathi have started there own blog. Cheers for them...

How Populism Works ?

I'm reminded of the well-known satirical novel by Robert Escarpit – The Literatron. I haven't read the novel but just a summary of its review is reproduced from eurozine article. It explains in subtle about how populism works....

I'm reminded of the well-known satirical novel by Robert Escarpit – The Literatron. The Literatron is more or less a machine for creating texts similar to a computer. The idea of its creators was to generate the perfect novel based on the best images from world literature. In response to the highest of expectations, the machine produced a bestseller – Virgin and Typesetter! When the Literatron was asked to compose a political speech the outcome was even more scandalous. After processing the entire history of political rhetoric the machine spewed out a series of gaffs such as: "This politics thing the more it changes the more it stays the same... There are no two ways about it, the clever people are the most stupid of all... All you have to do is hang a few of them (politicians) and things will improve...". This line of thought fits perfectly with an eloquent phrase from the Bulgarian transition, wrought by another merciless critic of his time, the Bulgarian satirist Aleko Konstantinov: "They are all rogues, on both sides!" The speech generated by the literatron was welcomed with raptures by the electorate and the politician whose job it was to make it quickly became a star. Every attempt to deviate from the absurd scenario led to vigorous disapproval.

I can't remember what happened to the literatron, whether it was destroyed as a malicious invention or if it destroyed itself. What was more important was the principles on which the machine operated. Its aim was universality and in the process it purged all nuances, simplified the meaning and looked for an arithmetical mean. The aim was for the text to reach the widest possible audience. The greatest irony was that a message meant for all was in practice a message for no one. This undermined its purpose, since it would have left its audience completely indifferent. The literatron is clearly a metaphor for populism as a leading principle of the political machine. However, populism works. If it didn't, politicians wouldn't resort to it so often.

The story is over dudes..