Chasing the monsoon by Alexander Frater

A big disappointment. The book might be interesting for foreigners who wish to think of India as a land of snakes and poverty.

Though it is non fiction, the writing style is pure fiction. The book is the journal of an Australian who traveled from Kerala to chirapunji, following the south-east monsoon.

The story begins with his neck injury. The co-patients talked about chirapunji so he embarked on the trip.

As the author flew from one place to another and lodged in expensive hotels , whatever views he expressed are similar to what elite of India usually have. He talked a lot about meteorology , without explaining the terminology. How many can understand lines like "sky is filled with cumulus "? What is the percentage is readers who know that cumulus is a type of a cloud? Instead of boring me with his childhood memories, he could have made it informative. And I don't understand how the marital problems of the couple who gave him the idea of chasing the monsoon are related to this book.

There is more description of beautiful women he came across in India than the monsoon. Everywhere he go, he met people who either speaks good English or none at all. None of the Indians in the book talked in pure butler English. Interestingly many use the phrase " touch wood ".

" Never since Somerset Maugham has rain seemed so romantic " - Observer .

Above line is printed on the back of the book. If observer is right, then Somerset Maugham's works on rain must be pathetic. No part of the book can really considered as poetic or philosophical. His difficulties with Indian bureaucracy and his experiences in Kolkata are the only parts I enjoyed reading. Extensive description of hotels, people he met coupled with many dialogs made it look like work of fiction.

After I finished, I cursed Hyderabad for not having a good library , I could have saved the money spent on it.

Poor Swami Vivekananda !!

Gouthama Budha is walking in a garden and met Bhagat Singh. After a small talk, Bhagat singh asked Budha for fool proof techniques to control anger. Budha understood that singh is unhappy about something but could not guess the reason. The young and dynamic man wanted India to be free, he fought for it, he gave his life for it. After India got independence he could not control himself with happiness. Then slowly he become moody , and over the years his fuse is getting shorter and shorter. Its the first time he openly talked about his anger issues. But, angry on what? Bhagat singh started explaining , " Its because of RSS, they didnt take major part in Indian independence movement, I never subscribed to their idiology when i was alive. Now, they talk as if i am one of them. Religious freaks. I am a socialist and dont believe in religion. But these RSS people are really tarnishing my image !! "

Budha openly laughed at the face of Bhagat Singh. For Singh, at the moment, he looked like a laughing budha without tummy. Soon, LOL of budha turned into an ironic smile and tapped the shoulder of Singh and said , " Thats the problem with Hinduism, centuries ago , i relented hinduism and started my own religion. After few centuries , they made me avatar of vishnu and cleverly wiped out my religion. How i become avatar of vishnu? I dont know. Now you are also a hindu for those freaks though you are a Sikh.  So is the case with shiridi sai baba. He is a fakir, who made an old masjid his home and treated both hindus and muslims equally. Now see his fate, he has got temple in every colony, and a dedicated brahmin priest to look after his marble statues.

"You guys dont pay much attention to current affairs of the nations" came Gandhi with his long stick in his hand. Bhagat Singh was horrified " What happened now, did they tarnish my image further? "

"No" said Gandhi, "RSS turned Swami Vivekananda into a religious bigot and started sharing whatever they want to say using his image as background on Facebook ".

"Thats terrible" said Bhagat. "Not only that , they celebrated his birthday at a grand-scale to prove them he is one of them , soon they will leave you alone".

Bhagat is very much irritated with that , " Thats a good news for me, but this thing cant go on like that. They complain on  Christianity because of the religious conversions. And these idiots are converting great people into hinduism. At least missionaries offer money, education and hospital facilities"

His irritation reached one more step with the smiling face of Budha. "And he knows all these?" he questioned Gandhi.

"Dont think so".

"He is a great philosopher and wise man who understood Hinduism , unlike these fellows, lets go and wake him from meditation , i cant tolerate watching his image moving from a philosopher to a bigot" 

When they saw Vivekananda doing meditation, Bhagat Singh shouted " Arise, awake and stop not till you beat them all" .

Swami Vivekananda opened his eyes and Singh told him what was happening.  He didnt loose his cool, got up slowly and said " May be its because of the saffron cloths, from now on i will follow my guru Ramakrishna parama hamsa and drape only in white " ! !

Land of seven rivers by sanjeev sanyal

The book received good reviews on flipkart.com. So, I ordered it.

Initially it is more like a book by Romila Thapar, I.e explained geology and then started real history. This technique is followed till the end of Harappan civilization. After that the economist in the author woke up and delivered opinions on historical develoments. The economic view of history is really interesting.

History was explained in a linear fashion till Mughals. From that point, he started on hopping. Author mentioned importance of lot of things in and around Delhi which are not famous tourist spots. Few anecdotes , trivia and lot of local stories which are useful for a tourist guide but not for a history reader.

The views of author on slums around a city and path of
transformation of a village to suburban and then to urban in the liberal India are amazing. Its good to read a popular economic cum geology cum historical book on India.

But there are few faults. The caption of the book is  " A brief history of India's geography " . But there is less geography, it's not even history in the back drop of geography. Definitely not a reference book for either history or geography of India.

Author has mentioned " Rudrama devi of Golconda". Its a blunder.

Cover page of the book is the geographical map of India showing its rivers. In those rivers Godavari is missing. As name is the book is " land of seven rivers", graphic designer , author and publishers should have checked if the map on the cover page is correct. The word Geography on the cover page made it look more silly.

But, on the whole, it's a good read. It just didnt deliver what I expected from the book title.

My theory on birth of Astrology

Since the first time I visited Birla Planetarium as a school kid, one question started rupturing inner walls of my skull i.e, how did they found zodiac signs? There are infinite number of stars in the universe and ones which are visible to the naked eye in the sky are scattered randomly. Then how did our ancestors observed patterns in them and named them?

Everybody seems to have observed the pattern in my class, i would be the dumb fellow if i asked the question , so i played along with everybody else. As a kid who grew up in the outskirts , i was forced to enjoy the sleeping on the roof in summer. Many times i tried to find the pattern by myself, but it was impossible. All i could find is the saptarshi mandlam which is more like a distorted parallelogram with a tail.

I googled for the answers and landed up in the wikipedia as usual. Normally we see the lines which connect the stars for our understanding and assume that there is a pattern. This time, I observed the stars which are connected.

Apparently,  the stars which form a particular astrological sign need not be having same characteristics. The stars which are connected by the lines dont have similar size or brightness. So our ancestors , imagined a picture in the sky and then pointed out the those particular stars. Its cheating. Its a lie. And all major countries adopted this system.  There are books, based on this system, daily future predictions on news papers, channels, magazines etc etc. A big fat lie.

After i finished laughing, i started thinking about the scholars who invented this system. Of course there is no information available on them. But one thing for sure, they are all insomniacs. And were thinking deeply about something, and hallucinated objects and then thought of zodiac signs with the stars which are behind the hallucinated objects. Most of them must be hunters because we have many animals in that list ( Aries, Taurus , Scorpio, Capricorn and Leo), Sagittarius must be representing a hunter. Apart from hunters , we have fishermen ( Cancer , Pisces) , gardeners or slaves (Acquarius) , retail merchants (Libra), infertile women ( Gemini ) , farmers ( Taurus ) and perverts who masturbate under open sky ( Virgo) .

Somehow, the system became famous and since then we have been cheated for generations.

If the modern insomniacs want to design a new system, may be we will develop signs representing bus, laptop, chicken  etc etc .