Firstborn

I have a theory or rather an equation - the fabulousness of a book is inversely proportional to the time taken to read it. The lesser the time taken to read the book, the more fabulous it is and vice-versa. I took all of three days to finish 'Firstborn' but then again I am a huge fan of sci-fi and I consider Arthur C Clarke as my guru.

First, an advice - Firstborn is not a standalone book. It is the 'concluding' book of the Time's Eye trilogy from the two authors and to better understand the context of the book, the characters and the places you should read "Time's Eye" & "Sunstorm".

The trilogy revolves around a sentient race of god-like aliens that have taken upon themselves to preserve the life of the universe by ensuring that species do not 'waste' the overall energy of the universe. In effect it means to preserve themselves and wipe out any other species by use of technology that they have mastered over eons of existence.

In "Time's Eye", the Firstborns create an alternate earth - called Mir - in its own parallel universe by patching toghether slices from earth's history much like preserving the best chapters of a book in a different file before destroying the original book. The central character across the series is a UN peacekeeper - Bisesa Dutt - trapped on Mir. She is the one who manages to establish some communication with the Orb-like-Eyes present all over on Mir and who agree to take her back to her time.

In "Sunstorm" the Firstborns launch a major sunstorm that has the potential to sterilise not just earth but even the astronauts on Mars. Rather than sitting back and waiting for the inevitable, Earth bonds together and launches a massive rescue campaign that involves creating a massive sun shield around the earth to deflect the solar flares.

"Firstborn" starts 37 years after Earth has survived sunstorm and rebuilt itself. It is a wary world on a lookout for the next attack from the Firstborns. A species that has diverged into multiple directions - those who stayed back on Earth, Spacers - those who live in spaceships between worlds and Martians - those who have settled on Mars. Each one of these have their own idealogies and don't trust the other while belonging to the same species. As the Firstborn launch their latest weapon - a Q Bomb - against the humans, the species has to come together to fight this latest attack. The Q Bomb is capable of destroying matter by sucking it into a small pocket universe and then expanding rapidly in a Big Rip tearing the planet apart.

Bisesa Dutt is woken up from her hibernation by the govt of Earth as she is only one who 'understands' the Firstborns and could help but she is 'kidnapped' by the Martians to show her an artifact that they have discovered at the pole. This turns out to be the 'Eye', the all-watching artifact of the Firstborns. The human settlement on Mars has been able to tap into Mir in the alternate universe and communicate with Bisesa's phone there. The Eye sends Bisesa to Mir where she is able to activate her AI phone by using the power from her martian suit and decipher that the alternate pocket universe of Mir will rip apart in 500 years. At the other end the fact that the Eye was trapped on Mars gives the indication that the Firstborns can be defeated.

Stephan Baxter and Arthur C Clarke make you push your boundaries of imagination and understanding as they combine regular universes with pocket universes, communication between these two universes and the planets, concepts of a Q Bomb being able to rip apart a palnet from the regular universe and trap it in an alternate universe only to be ripped apart later due to speedy expansion while bringing in sentient races that are hell bent on destroying all civilisations.

Present day Earth communicates with Patchwork Earth (Mir) to put up symbols that are a signal to patchwork Mars. Residents of Mir build giant trenches in the shape of the symbols in frozen Chicago and light the oil in them. The sole resident of patchwork Mars sees the symbols and crushes the Eye that they have trapped. This sends a distress signal to the Q-Bomb in the present day universe which diverts its path from Earth to Mars. Mars, in present universe, is sacrificed to save Earth. Beat that for imagination!

While the trilogy should have ended on this soul stirring note of Mars' sacrifice, the authors extend it further like a Bollywood movie that does not need to. The couple of pages at the end spoil the party and rather than giving you a clean ending set the stage for another set of prequels or sequels of whatever -quels that Stephan Baxter intends to write.

The book raises some pertinent questions about our universe. Do civilisations that reach intelligence first try to control the rise of other civilisations? How often have we done that on our own planet? Do sentient civilisations have the right to decide how other civilisations live?

Being a fan of that fact that sci-fi pushes your imagination and of Arthur C Clarke, I rate the book 3.5/5.

The Flea Palace

Every city has its apartment complexes. And every apartment complex has its stories. Stories of love, hate, worries, compassion, stress, depression, exhiliaration and a gamut of other emotions. And it has its secrets. Secrets that the apartment dwellers harbor from each other and a lot of times from themselves as well.

The Flea Palace by Elif Shafak is a story of one such apartment complex with a known problem which hides so many interesting issues in it. Under the expert hands of Elif Shafak, the angst and psychosis of each of the ten flats are revealed in it we see a slice of life in Turkey. Not from the beautiful postcards that the governemnt would like you to see and believe but from the true eyes of people who live the daily life. And that's what makes this book so interetsting. As you read the story of the 10 apartments in Bonbon Palace plagued by the smell of a garbage dump outside the building, you realise that each one of these could be someone you know from your apartment complex as well.

Could the person in Flat 203 in your apartment complex be actually like the divorced academician in Flat no. 7 of Bonbon Palace who loves to indulge in philosophy and talk big things while unable to deal with the fact that his wife left him but is having an affair with someone in the apartment complex as well as another friend? Could he?

Elif Shafak offers us a varied mix of emotions and issues through the residents of Bonbon Palace. She introduces us to a woman who has been forced to become independent because she perceives her husband to be a wimp, who is pregnant with a second child but is obsessed with protecting the pregnancy and her first child through all sorts of superstitions because she lost her first three pregnancies. The beauty is how Elif Shafak also shows us her son's emotions and how because of the overbearing nature of the mother, he too is going the same route as the father.

There is a student with his dog in one of the flats who is obssesed with death, who has pasted various forms of posters, writings, pages and slips on the ceiling of his flat. Who has no direction in life and would rather be lost in a haze of smoke alone with his dog than be found mingling with people and interacting with them. Twin hairdressers who were seperated at birth and lived in different countries but now together, who have nothing in common but stick together. Their touching story of guilt and redemption. A wife who has lost her identity and is only known by her husband's name, who is an alien in a foreign land and is unable to adjust herself to this new life. A woman who is a mistress to a fat olive merchant but happy in that existence with no expectations from life, who is clear with the academician that they can never be friends or lovers but only sex partners. Her descent into misery and self infliction is especically interesting and left unanswered. A lady with a hygiene OCD whose child gets lice and it turns her world upside down. A woman whose house is forever closed and who does not invite anyone inside. A family living in a fortress of a house with some sort of pet always kept outside. Another family with working parents leaving their three kids with their grandfather who loves to tell scary stories to them.

Bonbon Palace is a smasgosbord of emotions and glimpses into the daily lives of everyday people. The permeating garbage smell is the common link which unites them and seperates them at the same time. It is a treatise of social issues and makes you think as you read through it.

The book does get verbose in some parts as Elif Shafak seems to get carried away with her writing and goes off on a tangent. While there are some brilliant insights into some aspects, there are also some stories that sound redundent in the long run. Some flat residents that would best have been left untold because they have nothing to offer. She does try to link each of the flat residents and their stories with the others but it comes out as forced in some parts and nicely obvious in others. And therein lies the issue of the author. If you read this as her first book, you may miss out on reading her most brilliant book - Forty Rules of Love. But if that's the first one you have read, you will be like me - wanting to read her other books to rediscover the magic of Forty Rules of Love.

This is not a breezy read book. It takes time and sometimes effort to run through the story hoping to find some connection somewhere. Don't read this book expecting a serial fashion of one chapter leading to another with a logical ending. Rather read it as a documentary of daily life with parallel chapters and stories that hope to come together at the end with a logical ending. Do they? Not completely because the twist in the tale is at the very end and believe me it is a wonderful twise that will make you question everything that you read.

I would rate this at 3/5.

The Pilgrimage

So how does one go about writing a review for a book by the great author Paulo Coelho? His novel 'The Alchemist' is a classic and a bible to so many readers around the world. I haven't read any of his books and this one is my first. What intrigued me was the summary that this novel and the journey captured within was the starting point for his now famous book. So what better way to start reading Paulo Coelho than the beginning - The Pilgrimage.

The book makes a very interesting reading and exists in multiple planes. While at one level it is an autobiographical account of the author's journey along the famous Santiago de Compostela, at another level it is an adventure novel while at a completely different level it is a story of self realisation that makes you think about yourself.

The story has it that in 1986 Paulo Coelho was sent by his Master on this pilgirmage, this journey to find his sword that will complete his initiation into the Order. He is assigned a guide along this journey and is instructed to trust and follow his guide blindly with complete faith. The book talks about the author's jouney from being a skeptic and focussed on just completing the journey to find his sowrd to a phase where he forgets all about his outside world and is focussed on learning and living the moment.

Across the pilgrimage Petrus, his guide introduces him to various exercises to make him one with the elements and to bring him in touch with his inner self. These include the Seed exercise, the Speed exercise, the Cruelty exercise, the Messanger ritual, the Water exercise, the Blue Sphere exercise, the Buried Alive exercise, the RAM Breathing exercise, the Shadows exercise, the Listening exercise and the Dancing exercise. These are esoteric exercises that make you think that the pilgrimage might be a work of fiction. But if you scratch the surface you see that each one of these are meant to teach you something - patience, listening, facing fears, banishing bad emotions etc. I leave it to you to discover your teachings when you read the book.

Across the journey the author also has to vanquish a rabid dog to advance. He faces this dog multiple times in the journey. Paulo Coelho does get his sword at the end of the journey but not before realising some simple truths.

The sword stands for what you want in your life - your dream or your inner power. But you can attain that dream or that power only if you know what you intend to do with it. Without having a purpose for that goal, attaining the goal is useless. Along the way you will have to face your deepers fears and you will have to fight these. Either you will have to vanquish your demons and fears or they will ride you for the rest of your life and attaining your goal will loose its purpose. The various exercises prepare you to face your fears, fight the good fight and realise your dream.

Your goal - your sword - might be to have a happy life with a family. Your intention once you attain this could be to pass on this happiness to as many people as you can through your actions but your deepest fear could be commitment. Now think, how can you get your sword and fulfill its purpose without fighting your deepest fear? Either you win over it to get your sword or you let it vanquish you which means that attaining your sword is pointless.

When you read 'The Pilgrimage' keep this in mind. Read it not as an adventure story or as an aotobiographical one or even as the one that inspired Paulo Coelho to write his masterpiece but read it to know something about yourself and to discover some truth about yourself and your life.

Its a 4/5 for me and a book that must be read at different times in your life.

Forty Rules of Love

I got 'introduced' to Elif Shafak through TED Talks. I was surfing the site one day when I came across an interesting video called ' The Politics of Fiction'. Being a prolific reader I was intrigued about why politics was being mixed with fiction and how was it relevant? Elif Shafak impressed me with her talk on perceptions that authors have to face in their own field and from their peers.

It prompted me to want to read her books and so the first one that I laid my hands on was 'Forty Rules of Love'. I'm glad about the co-incidence that got me to TED Talks.

Forty Rules of Love is in part a love story, in part history, in part a representation of life as we know today and in part the transformational power of friendship. The book starts off as a simple story of Ella, a jewish housewife in Massachusetts whose life is going nowhere. Her life revolves around her family and has settled into a mundane existance. Her husband cheats on her, her children don't love or understand her and everyone takes her for granted. Into this boring existance she is delivered a manuscript that she must review.

Through the book 'Sweet Blasphemy' written by a first time author Aziz Zahara, Ella travels to 13th century where she meets a travelling dervish Shams of Tabriz and his travails to meet his destiny with Mawlana Rumi. As she reads the book, Ella starts to understand the reason for her angst against the world and her bleak outlook to life. She starts corresponding with Aziz and unwittingly finds herself falling in love with him and understanding the different forms of love.

The book shifts between the two stories of Shams' and Rumi in 13th Century and Ella and Aziz in present day. Ella's story is written in third person while the other story is in first person from the perspectives of different people in the story. This can sometimes take a little time to understand as to who is narrating the story now.

Rumi and Sham's story is authentic history. Prior to his meeting with Shams-e Tabrizi, Rumi was an accomplished teacher, cleric and a maulana in a mosque. His friendship with Shams' exposes him to the highest degree of love; not in the romantic sappy Valentine form but love in its purest form - love for fellow being, love for God, love for life - and transforms him into an ascetic and a modern purveyor of Sufism. Its a beautiful story

• Of Realisation - Rumi's realisation that life was so empty before Shams)
• Of Dedication and Loyalty - Rumi's dedication to the teachings of Shams' inspite of the world branding him a heretic and ruing his slide into oblivion from the highest office of the mosque
• Of Differing perspectives to the same story - each member of Rumi's family has a different perspective to what is happening to Rumi - from his wife, to each of his sons, to his adopted daughter and to the different people that are exposed to Shams
• Of Heartbreak - Rumi's abject depression when Shams' disappears from his life
• Of Joy and Fear - Rumi's joy to see Shams' back but his fear that he will go away again
• Of Acceptance and Transformation - Rumi's state when Shams' is murdered and his transformation into a poet using the pain of his loss

'Forty Rules of Love' exposes us too to the Forty Rules of life, love and living that Shams' shares with us along his journey.

Just as Shams-e Tabrizi had opened Rumi's eyes to the glorious forms of love and the joy of finding love and keeping it, so does Aziz and his book open Ella's eyes and world to the joys of letting love into one's life. 'Forty Rules of Love' is a book about the transformational power of love and friendship and it will transform you too.

Elif Shafak's writing style is simple and understated. While Ella and Aziz's characters and story is not too fleshed out, 'Forty Rules of Love' is really the story about Rumi and Shams-e Tabrizi. The modern day story seems superimposed to give the book a contemporary feel and make it appeal to a wider audience. The book could have stood alone as the story of Rumi and Shams'. While the 13th century story keeps you engrossed and turning the pages, there are times when Ella's story seems to intrude on the flow and you want it to get over fast. Elif Shafak too seems to have devoted less attention to Ella's story not giving us enough reasons for her angst and transformation.

From the first rule " How we see God is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves. If God brings to mind most fear and blame, it means there is too much fear and blame welled inside us. If we see God as full of love and compassion, so are we" to the fortieth "A life without love is of no account. Dont ask yourself what kind of love you should seek, spiritual or material, divine or mundane, Eastern or Western - Decisions only lead to more divisions. Love has no labels, no definitions. It is what it is, pure and simple. Love is the water of life. And a lover is a soul of fire! The universe turns differently when fire loves water!" the book is filled with nuggets that will open your eyes, make you think and transform you a little bit.

Forty Rules of LOve is a book that must be read again and again at different times of your life. I rate it 5/5.

Palace of Illusions

Ramayana and Mahabharata are India's most revered mythologies and its difficult to go wrong with them as long as one sticks to the original story and does not diverge from it. While Ramayana is the idealist story and strives to tell things in black and white, its really the Mahabharata that catches our imagination and forces us to think at multiple levels about the reality of life, people and relationships.

I've always been fascinated with Mahabharata and its multi-level messages. So when my friends told me about this book it sounded very intriguing from a simple fact that I had not come across the story written from a different perspective. I tried to get this book way back in June but picked up another book by the same author and reviewed that.

Panchali / Draupadi is by far the most interesting character of Mahabharata. She is born out of fire (some say by mistake) to fulfill a dreadful prophecy. She is married to five brothers each of which represent one true facet of a human being. She embodies different forms of love - a pure love for Krishna and a hidden love for Karna. She is a woman driven by strong emotions of revenge and self belief to an extent that she ignores her own children. She has the power to drive men to different destinies. She is a creative person harboring a dream of a beautiful home only to see it crushed. With so many different images and facets of a single person it would be a daunting task to bring to pen her side of the story. And I thought that would be the biggest challenge of this book.

'Palace of Illusions' is in some way able to address all these facets of her life but only superficially. Each facet is touched upon, scratched at the surface and then left alone. Chitra leaves you wanting to hear more about Panchali's views on certain subjects probably because of commercial aspects of making the book to a readable length. We get to see understand her need for an open palace filled with wonders and her final realisation of the vision but do not get to explore why she chooses certain things in the palace. We get to feel her angst as she is dragged to the court by Dushasan but do not get to hear her sadness, her views, her questions, her accusations and her anger at the impotence of the court. Almost every Indian knows the story and knows what happened in it from a man's perspective. This would have been a great opportunity to present a woman's perspective of some of the key elements of the story. I feel the author missed the opportunity and instead focussed on surface level to try and present the entire story in one sitting.

Mahabharata from the eyes of Panchali had the potential to essentially rewrite the story as we know it and force us to think about it from an oppressed person's perspective. Palace of Illusions fails on that count. It does not make us think. Rather it makes lusting for more depth. Its almost like a film that fails to live up to the expectations sets by the trailor. The image that you left with at the end of the book is that of a pining Panchali who would have been much happier if she would have married Karna rather than Arjun. And that's not the image that I wanted to have.

Having said that its still a great read. It exposes you to a different perspective of the story and brings to life some of the old debates of good and evil, of ego and subjudication, of dreams and reality, of truth and lies, of destiny and actions.

I rate the book 3/5 as it left me wanting more. I hope Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni comes out with a more detailed version.

Predictably Irrational

There is always a danger that the back-cover summary of a book does not match up to its content. While the back-cover summary sounds interesting, the book hardly lives up to it. And that is especially true for a non-fiction management book.

Thankfully, Predictably Irrational, is not one such book. The back-cover summary is what caught my eye in the plethora of books that wanted to jump into my bag through my wallet. (Too cheesy, isn't it? but I loved writing that line).

We've all grown up 'knowing' that there are two decision centers in our life - the logical mind and the emotional heart. We've all been told that we should take all our decisions using our logical mind weighing the different things and to try and ignore our heart tugging decisions from the gut. Mind always rules true in the long run. At the other end when we learn about the market dynamics we have learnt that market forces always determine the way a market operates in the long run. Demand and Supply, my friend, determine what sells, how it sells, why it sells etc etc.

And that's the truth, right? It works all the time, right? WRONG. That's what Dan Ariely wants us to know.

Predictably Irrational 'exposes' the fact that our decisions are primarily based on our social norms which combine our logical thinking and emotional state of mind. Dan Ariely tries to prove this not through subjective philosophy but bases it on numerous multiple 'experiments' that he and his fellow psychologists have conducted to test each assumption. This is the science of 'behavioral economics'.

Some of what Dan writes in his book and informs us are facets that we knew as truth but it provides some great validation though scientific study. Given a FREE thing don't we always graduate towards it? Do you end up buying six pairs of socks if there is a FREE offer with it even though you may not need the socks at all? To test this hypothesis Dan and his team did a chocolate experiment giving random people different types of chocolates, then discounting them by the same percentage which made one sample free. What do you think happened?

To test what effect sexual arousal has on our decisions they asked a group of men some questions first, then asked them to answer them again as they saw porn on a laptop. To test if our headache reduces if we take a higher cost painkiller, they zapped some students with an electric shock then gave them different pills letting them know the costs. Some were just sugar! To find out if dealing with cash makes us more honest, they did experiments where they asked students to answer a quiz then split them into groups that had to show the answers and take some amount for each correct answer. Another group had to only tell the evaluator how many answers were correct and take the relevant cash while the third group did not have to tell anyone but could take the money from the box. To test if we are inherently dishonest they made people recall the Ten Commandments before taking a test or doing an activity.

Interesting tests, all of them. I will not divulge what the results were but trust me that when you read the book some of the results will surprise you and make you think. Some will make you want to put some actions in your workplace.

This is a very interesting book and I am fascinated by the science of 'behavioral economics' and how the psychologists can take simple experiments and apply it across our behavior. Are we really like that and can we be explained by these experiments? Some chapters will make it very clear why so many of us are in credit card debt and why debit cards are the best thing. Why condoms in schools may not be that great an idea as compared to sex education.

I suggest that you read this book to open your mind. I rate it 3/5, if only because I am just not sure about the science but it is fascinating reading.

The Lost Symbol

Dan Brown strikes again. If you liked his 'Da Vinci Code' you might like this one too. I wasn't a big fan of his 'Demons and Angels'. Coming at the back of his highly successful book, the second one was almost like a Hindi Bollywood movie in its climax. I was a little skeptical as I started this one hoping that it would be a bit like the 'Da Vinci Code'.

So let me say at the onset that 'The Lost Symbol' comes very close to the first book. It mathches the intrigue, the pace, the mystery and the page-turning ability of 'Da Vinci Code'. From the first few pages when the hand appears to the last one it is a definite page turner with the exception of a few pages in between. But then which book does not have a few slow moments?

The book has its regular characters to constitute a potboiler. The protagonist - Prof. Langdon; his partner and love interest - Katherine Solomon; the self-tattooed, self-inflicted, no-emotion, driven baddie - Mal'akh; the law enforcer who could be good or bad - Inoue Sato, Director of CIA's Office of Security and the commonly known locations of Washington along with Freemason's intriguing rituals and people.

In my view the central theme of the book seems to be - "One Word will set them free"! Mal'akh kidnaps Langdon's mentor - Peter Solomon and cunningly brings Langdon to Capitol building where he leaves Peter's dismembered hand pointing to the sky. From there on Mal'akh sets clues for Langdon to decipher if he wants to save his mentor. Peter Solomon is, of course, a Freemason of the highest order who is protector of secrets, the main among them being that somewhere is hidden a word or a thing that could reveal all the secrets of ancient powers and mysteries to the world. The premise being that visionaries like Galileo, Newton, Einstien and other pioneers have known and seen those secrets and fear that if the world gets to know them there could be chaos if the power gets in the wrong hands. Therein being the motivation for Mal'akh who knows this secret since he disguised himself to get into the highest order of Freemasons.

Mal'akh's leverage is a video tape he made of the Freemason's initiation ceremony that shows such acts as drinking blood-red wine from a human skull, taking part in an enactment of your own muder, hearing things like your tongue being cut if you reveal the secrets and so on - all seemingly barbaric acts. The idea is that these are all symbolic but if released can wreak havoc in the world since the highest order clearly shows key and important people from the administration as being part of the cult. So this video must not see the light of day. And so Langdon must dig deep into all his knowledge and understanding of ancient mysteries to unlock secrets and decipher codes.

'The Lost Symbol' takes us on a rollercoster ride from the Smithsonian Museum to the Capitol to the National Library of Congress to the Washington Monument with Langdon chasing Mal'akh and trying to save his mentor. In all this there is also the intruiguing science of Noetics that Katherine Solomon is working on which is the study of the untapped potential of the human mind with the central theme that when many people share a same thought that thought can have physical implications. So if all os us think that something good will happen, something good will. The HUGE thing for Katherine Solomon seems to be when she shows that a human soul exists!! But read the book for that scene.

The only disappointment of the book stems from the ending which is almost anti-climatic. Also if you have read enough mystery books you tend to get a feel of Mal'akh and his mystery towards the ending. I did. I managed to figure out who Mal'akh was before Dan Brown got to it.

If 'Da Vinci Code' changed Paris then 'The Lost Symbol' will make you look at Washington in a new Masonic light. Reading the book does make you wonder about the Freemason's and how much impact they had on the roots of American Constitution and political architecture. Why is the Capitol building designed along Roman lines? huh?

The book is 600 pages thick so its not a fast breezy read. But if you love mystery, intrigue and you want it all to be fast paced, this is the book for you. If you want to have a good time, not think too much and don't mind forgetting the book after a few months, pick this up and have a blast.

I would rate it 3.5/5!