Category: Book

Our life is but a winter’s day,

Some only breakfast and away,

Others to dinner stay and are full fed,

The oldest man but sups and goes to bed,

He that goes soonest has the least to pay.

– A.C Maffen

A jobless and distraught Shankar finds refuge in Curzon Park at Chowringhee under the statue of Sir Hariram Goenka, deprived of the comforts he had as the last clerk of the last English barrister of the Calcutta High Court.His life was good until the old Barrister breathed but now he was amidst the millions shelterless whom Sir Hariram’s Statue provided a good sleeping site.Made them travel far from the land of tireless striving to the beautiful lands of dreams. One such evening at Curzon Park made Shankar face to face with an old acquaintance, a private detective Byron. By the grace of Byron, Shankar got a job at the Shahjahan Hotel. Shahjahan hotel, an establishment by a man named Simpson, was more than a mere hotel. Its walls were painted. Painted undergraces and curses. A place which had stood firm in all times and had seen too much of all times.

Shankar gets to meet people, unknown but who became the pillars of his future life. There was Satyasundar Bose whom the Shahjahan crowd has madeSata Bose, there was Marco Polo the manager whom life has blessed with much curses and grievances which the outer crowd knew nothing about.

Being posted at the reception with the brotherly Sata Bose, Shankar came to know the demonic suited crowd of Calcutta.  An accursed city that shines bright, day and night, mocking upon its people. A city proudly covering its sins. Set in 1962’s Shankar with this book depicts Calcutta in a different cover. A City of dreams soaked in sins and grief. A city where people’s suits are just covers for their demonic souls. A city where money can build and destroy.

 There are people, too good but sufferers of this accursed city; there is Doctor Sutherland, the angel of Suite number 2 Karabi Guha, the unsung maestro of Shahjahan P.C Gomez, the simple Nityahari, Connie and Lambreta whose lives are mere melancholy, the air hostess Sujata Mitra ……….all suppressed under the agonies of life but still keeping the hustle on.

Life goes on in Shahjahan and many stories unfold before Shankar as the thick paint of Shahjahan’s walls dissolute.

The whole book captures the audience and binds them with the characters whose life forms a ship trapped in storm and we rise and fall with the tide.The language is simple but is good enough for the inner person to rise and retaliate the anguish of life. We all being the patriarch who stays till supper.

Adi Shakti Namo Namah, Sarab Shakti Namo Namah, Prithum Bhagawati Namo Namah, Kundalini Mata Shakti, Mata Shakti Namo Namah.

About 2300 years ago, a hunted haunted Brahmin sought revenge against the vain  King of Magadha. History banters his glory as the master strategist Chanakya who uprooted vanity and immorality from the world’s most powerful empire, and created an unified Bharata through ways not much high on moral grounds. Lecherous politics plays prime as history recreates Chanakya in Pandit Gangasagar Mishra of present day. Gangasagar through his will, wit and the most strong of all – the power of renunciation strives successfully to instil his protégé Chandini Gupta as the most powerful person of the world’s largest democracy. What ensues next turns the reader into a silent characterset in the book–depicted events, as the political battle rages with its fineflames of wit, humour, astonishment, surprises and sacrificial innocent deathsor prized murder for clearing the path to target.  

The story revolves simultaneously along both the facets – Chanakya in past and Pandit Gangasagar of present. The book has been the result of the author’s committed research.

The power of politics have been well presented with its dirtiest stakes well demonstrated and implemented by both the protagonists in this cold blooded battle for power in the right sense but through wrong means as it is said “the ends justify the means”.

Shakti triumphs Shiva in the present age as Gangasagar presents Chankya’s wisdom to uplift a woman as per Suvasini’s curse thousand years back.

The language used is simple yet each paragraph gives a new tinge to the story. Overall, the book makes for a fast-paced, gripping read which grasp the reader by their most responsive nerve. This book is a must read for conspiracy seekers.

This 346-page book might be the longest I ever took to read and might be the longest to stay with me. In the words of Nobel laureate Hans Bethe “There are two types of genius. Ordinary geniuses do great things, but they leave you to believe that that you could do the same if only you worked hard enough. Then there are magicians, and you can have no idea how they do it. Feynman was a magician”

Every piece and portion of Feynman’s life comes off as a relatable story, but the magic lies at parts where Feynman exceeds your imaginary limitations and does pure magic and you are left wondering how is it possible for a common guy like Dick to do it, but yes, that’s the brilliance of Richard Feynman.  You might flow through the pages and think yes he’s good or no he’s a bit of nuisance, but then he strikes you in your highest mental accord and you go back and reread portions of the story to find out what you missed about this genius.

This book cannot be called an autobiography, taped conversations with a friend of lectures delivered all over the world just changed in voice to match the need of the book, it maybe is better called a vividly painted self-portrait where all the fine lines and creases and bends are depicted accurately.

A physicist, musician, safecracker, dancer, practical joker, Feynman used to be a man of many talents, but his life might yet amaze you as to how a simple guy learnt to pick up girls at a bar to how he contributed to the atom bomb at Las Alamos and later how this genius was awarded the Nobel Prize which he thought as just an added headache. This book covers it all, giving all a reason to have a copy on their shelves.

How does a book titled Poor Economics written by two very (lets say) left-leaning authors find their place as the Goldman Sach’s Business Book of the Year? Finished with this piece, an ideal starter pack on comprehending world poverty. However there aren’t any generalist theories that can bring the entire 99 cents per day population under one umbrella of economics and public policy, and this book doesn’t try to find those as well. It is more or less a comprehensive manuscript that covers data and research taken from almost half the globe over decades of sustained efforts of understanding the granularities of the socio-economic dynamics at play relevant to poverty and related issues. A major blow to many stereotypes yet never going out of logic.

Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time is a long time bestseller of the non-fiction category and has topped plenty charts since its first publication in 1988. I do not have the audacity to rather review such a magnificent book by one of the giants in Physics however I do need to stress that the popularity of this book amongst the general public is not because of it very easy to understand, non-technical, and comprehensive piece on Cosmology and Astrophysics, but rather because it is cool to be photographed with a copy.

Hawking starts with an introduction of the geocentric and heliocentric models of solar system as predicted by Aristotle and Copernicus respectively, the conquest with the Catholic church and goes on to move through the development of Physics with the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics to finally string theory and a subsequent search for a Unified Field Theory. The book mainly revolves around the evolution of the universe from the big bang (whether it really happened is also debated in the book with clear points taken from research that both contradicts and/or upholds the theory), singularities and its subsequent future (if a big crunch is really on the way) along the time vector.

Starting with Bertrand Russell’s encounter with the bold idea for tortoises all the way down holding the earth on its back, a subsequent search for the need for the existence of a creator is equally emphasized upon throughout the book but with no clear solution (as expected).

Many physicists stress on Steven Weinberg’s First Three Minutes to be a better introductory book in this domain for the layperson in spite of its coarse language, the book has lesser technical jargons and is easier to comprehend.

For anyone interested in the cosmos and with a basic idea of general physics, the basic laws and few terminologies here and there, this book is a must read however may not be recommended for an absolute layperson.

Richard Thaler (source: nobelprize.org)

“All Economics will be as behavioral as it needs to be. And those who have been stubbornly clinging to an imaginary world that consists only of Econs will be waving a white flag, rather than an invisible hand.”

Economics being the giant of the Social Sciences, it is quite ironic that the first time behavioral aspects were taken into account was in the 1970s with RICHARD THALER and his attempt to merge psychological tools in thinking about economic problems.

As a book, Thaler has artfully guided it to accommodate the entire stream of Behavioral Economics from its birth as mere thought experiments to its wide acceptance throughout academia. The first half of the book deals with the inception and certain experiments that reassured the need for accounting behavioral tools in empirical economic research to its major debates and then the emergence of an accepted whole new field, making way to further bigger applications like in Finance (Behavioral Finance) and Policy making first in UK and then in US (Behavioral Insights Team). The book ends on a note of how behavioral applications in Macroeconomics are evident yet not perused much by academics yet, however not before with mentions of Nudging (another bestseller of Thaler) a concept that too utilizes the behavioral aspect of economics and tries to incorporate economic (profitable) decision-making in people and markets through the simpler nudges (push).

The book follows a course that of merely three broad aspects (also summarized by Thaler himself at the end):

1. Observations to identify the existence of an invisible hand
2. Data Collection to ensure against confirmation bias and predict the rights over wrongs through documentation
3. Speak up and let your findings be known against the existing prejudices of the “unrealism of hyperrational models”

For someone looking for a awe-inspiring artistic storytelling like ones commonly found in books of development economics, this might not be one, as misbehaving tracks only cases where consideration of behavioral aspect has led to or would have led to rather improved outcomes and hence most case studies are based on people, firms and/or governments trying to turn in a profit along with some game examples of similar nature, however the book doesn’t lack in dealing out economic morals to readers and quite evidently a major chunk of developmental economics makes a larger utilization of behavioral tools for example the famous randomized control trials.

Thaler received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2017 for his contributions to behavioral economics.

This book is not one for a leisurely weekend reading by the layman, but someone like an academic, economics researcher or student, or a generalist with a peculiar interest to read about the birth of behavioral economics should definitely give it a go, for others picking up this book and yet finishing it inspite of losing interest mid-way and without taking back academic notes would be…wee, misbehaving.