Reading The Kite Runner

Well, I knew the genre I was being led into – fiction, but with a touch of reality and I have no complaints, only some reservations. The Kite Runner is certainly no bad read at all. It falls into my categorisation of works which I call the “Paulo Coelho type”, whose only work I have read is The Alchemist.

This genre is smooth to read, meticulous in its descriptions, nuanced in expressing emotions and a light read (for sure does not give a headache!). Although this is what is successful international literature, this genre by itself is a cliché as per me. 

 

Now, reading The Kite Runner was a nice walk down memory lane, reminscing my initial years of the usual fiction reading. All you Khaled Hosseini fans, I am certainly not disregarding the quality of the writing that has gone into it, but only expressing my disadvantage of being a bad receptor of fiction of his kind.

Things I loved

 

The Kite Runner is one of the smoothest reads - in all senses; not much to think about, not much to remember, no dictionary look-ups and predictability at about every nook and corner. These are for sure a nice respite from the other kinds of my recent literature. 

 

The backdrop of the story. It was as if, I was focusing on the unfocused portions of the scenes throughout. So, how did Afghanistan look? Why did the Russians invade? Are the Talibans like the ones I have seen on TV? The mountains, terrains, ambiance.

Simplicity : As simple a thing gets, more the beautiful it becomes! This almost holds good here. To see such a simple work to have that beauty and to have appealed to a really wide audience is a testimony to the simplicity and the beauty.

And not to mention, one of my quickest reads.

Things I did not love (!=hate)

The story by itself is too much of a repetition to what the Indian movies have fed you by the time you decide not to watch any more of them. The sentimentalism about relationships, which sometimes go beyond normalcy are an overdose to me. And I did not for obvious reasons feel very appreciative about the turmoils and guilt the protagonist undergoes.

Like I said, I liked the background better than the main story, for, there is a weak person as the protagonist. Now, it might seem unreasonable, but yes, in fiction, at least I need an inspiration! Else, come on: There is no point of reading!

And the simplicity is too simple; for there aren't many memorable lines too from the book! I like witty or profound lines, and was for sure disappointed to find hardly a few.

I might sound like the hungry critic, waiting to chew some cud about a famous work, but no: These are just my personal views as always. Of all the praises you might have heard for the book, not many would have had a perception such as mine, that could be because of the obtuse nature of reading I am into. 

 

I look at reading as an investment, and I am not a happy customer this around.

Well I have The Thousand Splendid Suns, and yes will read it, but not in the near future.

Gabriel Marquez's The General in His Labyrinth

Reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez (GGM) most known for his book One Hundred Years of solitude (I'm yet to read), is an acquired taste I'd say when it comes to this book of his General in His Labyrinth.

After Oscar Wilde's wit in writing, for the style I would certainly endorse GGM's mannerisms of writing. Even the simplest of the observations are presented in a form that is hard to ignore. Metaphors, similes and verbal decorum are plentiful in his verbiage and keeps the readers entertained.

Talking about the content of this book, an interesting topic to write about - The last days of Simon Bolivar. The dusking life of one of the greatest Generals of Latin America is the protagonist of the book. It is not even Simon Bolivar, but all the nuanced insults, regressions and declines he faces towards the end of his life are unsympathetically, as if in a mode of enjoyment are described by GGM through the book.

Personally, for me the content in the book was super negative, and I for obvious reasons do not enjoy such literature. The main savior for the reader like me to savor this book is GGM's style of presentation as mentioned before.

A couple of pages where GGM describes Simon Bolivar's romantic interests, from the perspective of one of the ladies and Simon Bolivar are the most enjoyable. If it was congruence with my own volatile state of mind, or the pleasure of reading some wonderful writing I might not want to probe into, but those are the pages which stand out, and I might want to quote a couple of lines from memory!

He would leave her on any pretext in a foolhardy effect to escape the servitude of formalized love.
I'll never fall in love again.It's like having two souls at the same time.
He went back, knowing he would sink in her quick sands....


And a whole gamut of zeniths of imagination through the book shaping up as pinnacles of verbal creativity:

Dignified decorum of nostalgia
Lost in the lucidity of advanced levels of insomnia
He had buried her at the bottom of a water-tight oblivion as a brutal means of living without her.
He had the patience of a drowned man..

It is things such as these which kept me afloat through the book, and certainly not the hundreds of Latin American names and places which one is expected to correlate to when incidents are narrated.
Now, I for sure know that Geography of places, and History with names and dates are never going to be my domains of expertise!

In all, looking forward to read One Hundred Years of Solitude sometime soon. And GGM will of course be on my list of favorite writers.
When it is pure genius, it shows!

Right Ho, Jeeves!

Got on to reading fiction after quite sometime; And this time I made it a point to get hold of some humor. Based on the collective opinions of some friends and a huge reputation online, PG Wodehouse was the name appearing everywhere.

Right Ho, Jeeves! was the book, and I am relishing the fact that I was smiling almost half the book and giggling within for the rest of it. Also having known that the subtle and witty Jeeves was played by one of my favorite actors Stephen Fry, Jeeves throughout was played by him in my imagination.

Although Jeeves has very few lines, and very little presence on the scenes, he's undoubtedly the protagonist and most of the scenes as imagined by me also had him heavily occupying his master Wooster's thoughts !

And this vividness PG Wodehouse brings about with his simple language and effective narration allows one to travel into the country side house and be part of the audience in most of the hilarious scenes.

Will be looking forward to some more of PG Wodehouse books; for now, will try to own the Jeeves and Wooster TV series with Stephen Fry playing Jeeves :)
Right Ho!

Confessions of an Economic Hitman

Reading this autobiographical, tell-all book by John Perkins seemed surreal.
I am not someone who is very naive about manipulations; I would at least be able to discern between genuine attempts of foreign support, with those of attempts towards hegemonic domination, better than a lot many of us who are blinded and fooled by the corporate media.

But, this detailed reporting from an insider sends shivers down my spine.

A "superpower", pushing beyond the realms of being anything but ethical in order to dominate countries under its vindicative goverment, run by selfish, greed mongers in the background is hard to believe. The USA with its ancient Manifest Destiny and other crap, now has accomplished an indomitable position, where it has the say about anything and everything about every country.

While even countries like India (ironically the largest democracy in the world) is far from being soveriegn, as revealed in the recent WikiLeaks cables, where a cabinet reshuffle in Indian Ministers portfolio was instigated by the lobbyisits of US. When such is the case with the largest democracy, other countries in the middle east, African continent and Latin America, except for a 'few nations' are all entangled in this web unleashed by the aspirations of one country in its distopian dreams of a global empire with a "free" world market, based on exploitation of the majority for the benefits of a small minority, increasing the disparity ruthlessly at a global scale, including amongst its own people.

Instiutions such as the IMF, World Bank and even the UN have evolved to become primary tools used by this superpower and its allies to arm twist countries retaliating against the submissive nature of their hegemony.

This book gives a scintillating account of all the dirty tricks, evil ploys and inhumane nature of functioning of the system as it is today.

Defying the system when it is this hostile is the most natural response anyone who recognizes this hostility would end up doing. But, the efficacy of this system has been its subtle and orchestrated perpetration which keeps all of this hostility hidden from us.

That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
Something on the lines of what Morpheus says to Neo in The Matrix, is the current state of the world.

Nonetheless, this ain't no movie - People are dying, countries are getting impoverished and future is getting bleaker. We are all part of this megaplan of hegemony and exploitation,both by getting exploited and exploiting at various levels.

Defy and change!
We need to change it to a different world: A world as we dream of it, as John perkins puts it in the book.
Now what is the dream of the world we wish to live in is upto each individual to choose upon.

The God Delusion

How lucky we are to be alive, given that the vast majority of people who could potentially be thrown up by the combinatorial lottery of DNA will in fact never be born. However brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, or complain that it is dull or barren or (like a child) boring, couldn't this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will never even be offered life in the first place?

Think about it. On one planet, and possibly only one planet in the entire universe, molecules that would normally make nothing
more complicated than a chunk of rock, gather themselves together into chunks of rock-sized matter of such staggering complexity that they are capable of running, jumping, swimming, flying, seeing, hearing, capturing and eating other such animated chunks of complexity; capable in some cases of thinking and feeling, and falling in love with yet other chunks of complex matter!

-Excerpts from the book "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins

I have already attributed Richard Dawkins to have facilitated my transition to become the ardent and absolute atheist that I am now, in previous posts. And like in his documentaries, he is cleverer and super accurate with his arguments in The God Delusion.Impeccably convincing!

Turning towards the book itself, it is a quick and joyous read in the literary sense. But, this book symbolizes an apprehension of serious scale and it ain't just the literature one needs to ponder about. What actually dawned upon me while reading the book was the intent of the book itself. Pushing science and rationality amidst the infinite bandwidth white noise of religion, Gods, and the related blah blah!

Religion is ubiquitous, and it certainly is perilous, whatever small subjective positives one might have experienced. This ancient dogma has to be stigmatized for, eradicating it would take a long long struggle against many maniacs.

Nevertheless, increasing the consciousness of people pertaining to the futilities encapsulated in religion as a whole will slowly evolve to eliminate this weird but natural seeming, artificial digression of us humans.

While Science is what has given us answers, drawing us out from the shrouded clouds of ignorance, into light and still leading, Religion is that strong regressive force holding back majority of the Homo sapiens , bound to the shackles of faith, blind faith and dumb blind faith!

The God Delusion is a must read for everyone: Of course it will be offensive to the strong theists. But, for anyone who's just swaying away from the absolutism attached to religion, it will certainly help and enable them start drifting farther away from religion and closer to rationality - All for the good.

I might personally want to see religion eliminated from the face of the earth; But, it is even more complexly interleaved than even Dawkins himself projects.

Let's hope there's light, sometime soon, if not spontaneously!

I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.
Albert Einstein

Inside WikiLeaks, and inside Inside WikiLeaks!

 I am a self proclaimed admirer of Julian Assange [J] and more so of WikiLeaks[WL]. Let this trait of mine not induce an idea that this post of mine is in favor of J or WL, in manners more than what they deserve.

Daniel Schmitt [D], actually the pseudonym of Daniel Domscheit-Berg is the author of the supposedly tell all book about WikiLeaks in his recent hurriedly written, crib-log Inside WikiLeaks.

I took up reading this one for, this is the first account of any details from within the secretive whistle-blowers platform WikiLeaks. But, as ridiculous a book could get, Inside WikiLeaks is majorly the yanking of D about J's personal habits, dressing sense, his perception of women, arrogance, egotism and everything that should have been confined to one's personal observations about a fellow comrade in their struggle against secrecy, and for transparency.

Non conformity with the book

WL has always propagated that "Transparency is only for Governments and big corporations, and not necessarily for individuals". I think D had got this idea distorted and goes on yanking about J's personality, and reporting nuances of J's behavior like kids would do in kindergarten.

J eats with his hands, and wipes off on his pants.
J taps the keyboard hard, creating disturbing noise.
J wore the same white shirt for both the days of the conference.
J eats faster and leaves me little to eat.
J gets more importance, and not the team, or myself.
J wears my jacket, and goes to sleep.
J pounces on my cat.
J is not bothered about selling the T-shirts, he's busy philosophizing.
J is paranoid!
And lots of commentary on J's sexuality, to the extent that D brands J a sexist.

D, for all the credibility he has as being an important person who was working for WL, hailng from the Chaos Computer Club, and to come out with a kindergarten complaint book of this sort is silly firstly, and also puts the work he had contributed to WL in bad light. I can very well anticipate the quality of work he would have been contributing to WL with a mindset such as this.

The claims of him being sidelined, and that J was getting more attention is again a point not worth debating. WL is the ingenious and courageous brainchild of J, and if he gets credit better than his counterparts, there's nothing wrong in it, unless you have peers who are trivially bothered about it. This is a normal issue in any team, and I can testify with first hand experience, like many of you would as well.

The most importantly ignored aspect about J, or WL in the book has been the security threats they have been undergoing. D pretends as if they were functioning in a safe and secure IT firm, just writing code. Even if some of the threat claims made by Assange have been exaggerated, instances where WL whistleblowers were killed, or Amazon, Paypal, VISA withdrew their services reveal to great extents the opposition WL was/is being conditioned to. And because J had to front end WL in times of most turbulence, even his safety and well being is at evident risk.
The circumstantial allegations of the sexual misconduct by two women, to get J grounded is more than a normal reaction to what could have been J's actions.

Conformity with the book

Although the book is filled with nonsensical commentary on J, the details about how WL functioned initially, or at least to the point of narration where D is still not jealous of J is quite a read.
A single decade old server hosting WL for the first whole stint, and portraying it differently to the external world, or about the impact their leaks had is enjoyable.

The criticism on the disorientation of WL from its core principles of neutrality, because J wanted to go head on with the US, if true is a point I too would be worried about. As far as D has written in this book, J's anarchist tendencies have driven him to a war with the US. But, I cannot deny the fact that, when you take World politics and are trying to make it transparent, the US of course would emerge from under everyone's carpets. And to expose the world, is in reality exposing the US, for, the US is so intrinsically involved with the rest of the world!

Holding back of leaks, or if any bias has happened to them as D alleges, that again is a matter of immense concern. Although, apart from the commentary which influence the opinions of the audience, the material by itself will be authentic, or the concerned authorities would certainly pull WL into intended espionage.

About alleged mishandling of the donations to WL, which is the core motive which has driven D to write this book according to me, must sometime come under scrutiny, or better if J would publish the transactions to shut the critics.

The internal structure, and inherent secrecy of WL as an organization is understandable for, they're in a tough game, playing big opponents and functioning with transparency is something a small team like theirs cannot afford to.

About Open Leaks [OL], I am certainly looking forward to it taking off. For, if OL can be better than WL, by not influencing the nature of leaks, or precedence, or of the recipients of the leaks, it will certainly be better. Transparency on their platform theoretically sounds very promising, and if accomplished it can certainly become the baton holder of whistle-blowers after WL.

D says,
"There's enough injustice in the world to occupy more than one (whistleblowing) platform.", and let us hope both together can make the world a better place.

All said and done, WikiLeaks made the world aware of the importance of whistleblowing to a greater extent than ever before in the History, encouraging a lot of dissidents to take up the cause. Julian Assange, irrespective of his gray shades personally, has been the spokesperson for transparency of Governments globally and will remain an icon ( maybe not of Pop icon nature, as claimed by Daniel), but more important than that – A role model to today's technologists to take up issues of social concern, without secluding themselves from the realities around...