Inferno : Review

Inferno by Dan Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 One "first-time" for me with this book is that I could identify with the antagonist of this book right from his introduction since I too have pondered several times on the central issue of the book. I kept agreeing with his line of reasoning from the word get-go. Maybe that was Dan Brown's intention.

Without giving away much details, I will just say a few good things about the book:

- This is a much much better thriller than Dan Brown's last book, Lost Symbol and thankfully does not have too much of art/architecture mumbo-jumbo like the previous books.
- The central theme is quite relevant, interesting and something I think everyone should have a dialogue on. To quote the book, "The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their silence at times of crisis."
-I quite liked the several red herrings and twists in the story though they are not that necessary.
- I think the ending is a "happy" one in its own way. It is like the best possible way to deal with the problem and it sounds like Dan Brown hit upon a best "realistic" possible solution to a "real" global problem and wove a Robert Langdon book around it.
-It has been a very long time since I last read Dan Brown but I felt this book has lot of quotable dialogues.

Go read the book, if you are a thriller fan and/or have read Dan Brown earlier.


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Comsos : Review

Cosmos by Carl Sagan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Carl Sagan's beautiful words transform you to outside the earth, into the cosmos and lets you appreciate the grandeur of the universe. It has so many unforgettable quotes which makes you ponder simultaneously on how precious human race is and also how trivial it is in the big picture. I think this is a must read not only for every science enthusiast but also for every person to appreciate the very fact we are "alive" and "conscious" in this universe and in his words how we are "star stuff pondering stars". His pitch for disarmament of nuclear weapons and increased investment in the cosmic exploration in the last chapter is nothing short of a historic speech if it has really been delivered on some big platform. I think every Nation head needs to read the last chapter especially in today's world to understand how important it is for us to make right decisions in this age. Read the book to appreciate the Universe and Nature and the fact that you are the result of innumerable, highly unlikely things occurring at the right place and the right time.



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Ideas on how to improve greenery

             Me and my flatmate were discussing on ways to improve greenery to combat rising pollution levels and hit upon some ideas which looked decent. So, I thought of sharing them here.

               Best way to get people to do anything would be to give them some incentive. So, one of the ways we thought might help is giving tax benefit to people for planting trees. For example, let us say they can get income tax exemption of 10,000 for each tree they plant and ALSO maintain it. After 2 years, let us say the tree dies because you have not looked after it, you will have to pay taxes of all the previous years. This will make sure that they will look after the plant till it becomes a tree. Government can provide the seeds/plants to them and even a location to plant. But one problem with this is there will be a huge problem with auditing them. There will be huge paper work and it is practically impossible and not realistic to audit trees planted at individual level.
                To overcome this problem, the government can do a couple of things. Instead of giving tax benefit to individual tax payer, they can give tax benefit to companies. This will be much easier to manage both for government and for the company since government will give the plants and the land. There is not much extra effort from government on audit side and the company can not only easily plant and maintain trees very cheaply and get tax benefit, but also show it proudly as a Corporate Social Responsibility activity. If getting such land is difficult, they can just ask them to plant and maintain trees on either side of highways from some km to another km stone. This is a win-win situation as it is easy to audit and also provides some employment opportunity to villages near that highway. I am sure they can come up with numbers such that government need not forego too much tax and companies can both save some tax money and also proudly show it as CSR. Also, as more companies join this program, there will be additional pressure on other companies who might be reluctant if they feel tax benefit is not worth it.
                Since, this might not cover much area unless individuals are involved, they can provide a way for individual also to get tax benefit by encouraging some group formation. For example, there can be a company which just does planting and maintenance of tress on highways and "sells" it to individuals. Let me explain. Let us say there is a company where you can go and buy Rs.100 per tree(assuming tax benifit of Rs.10,000 per tree to simplify matters.) Since you get a tax benefit of 1000(assuming you are in 10% bracket which is most common), you have an incentive to buy one tree. Now if 1000 people buy these trees. company raises Rs. 1Lakh which should be enough to pay a gardener to look after, say 1km stretch of highway and still make profit. It will be easy for government also to now audit the tax benifit claimed by the individual. You just submit the form which says you are paying for the plant just like you submit a Life Insurance policy form. Only problem here is, if you say stop paying to the tree maintenance company after 3 years, the plant may die but there is no way government can know this and go back and take away the taxes it exempted from the last 3 years(since you are individual) but I am sure the plant will not now die since the ownership of that plant can just be shifted to some new customer by the company. This way, we can ensure lot of greenery 15 years down the line with minimal effort from all sides.
                  This can be further tuned like, say if you are ready to do it in some place in city itself or on city roads, you can get more benefit! So, we can make sure cities themselves will have good greenery. Govt can just auction main roads in the city to whoever bids the best in terms of tax benefit they are ready to claim! For example, let us say for highways, benefit is 10,000 per plant. Inside city, the bidding can start at benefit of 20,000 per plant and whoever bids the lowest wins it. The bid can go lesser than 10K also since it is easy for company to maintain roads with-in the city. That way, there is an incentive for company and also govt can get greenery easily.
                  I am trying to minimize effort from government here since, I am sure any effort I assume from government side will not actually fructify!

How does the idea sound? Do let me know.

Speed of Light

When Manav jump starts a dormant blog, physics becomes weird, forcing him to write this blog. (for those of you who didn't get this line, pardon me for the shitty way of trying to mimic Avengers : Age of Ultron summary).

Don't ask what I was doing when I came up with this "theory" but I still find this interesting (probably because I came up with it :P).

So, my humble version of trying to understand the constant of light is this. Like they say in the Vedas/Scriptures, I am the Universe and the Universe is Me. I think our consciousness is tightly connected to our senses and without any sense, there is no I, there is no consciousness. We can understand the universe only through our senses and since vision is the fastest way, we can transfer information among all the senses(faster than sound and smell? and I dont know if transfer of information through touch even makes sense) and light is through which we transfer it, it is the absolute constant in our understanding of Self/Universe. Bluntly put, nothing can go faster than light among the ways we know and hence light is the universal constant in our understanding of the cosmos. If there has been evoultion in our senses and say we can communicate directly from brain to brain without using sound or light, then we will see universe in a different way and come up with another theory in which light is not absolute constant and something else is! time travel then might look trivial like travel through space.

P.S : I wrote it some time back. It is in my draft folders and felt like posting it as it is.

The Scion of Ikshvaku

Scion of Ikshvaku by Amish Tripathi
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

      As I feared, Amish started concentrating on other Indian Epics after the success of Shiva Trilogy. He started with the re-telling of Ramayana. I had almost zero expectations on the book but made a compulsive purchase of the book while browsing Amazon. As I started reading the book, it started meeting my expectations(zero!). I always disliked his style of writing. Honestly, I have seen many blogs with better English and better sentence structuring.

    In the first two books of Shiva Trilogy, this irksome nature of his writing was shadowed by my ignorance of Shiva's story and my appreciation of the concept(What if Gods were humans). But, in this book, since I am well aware of Ramayana, the bland writing is glaringly visible. I hate the way he writes the philosophical interactions between the characters. I hated it in Shiva Trilogy and it is no good in this book. I also noticed in this book that Amish's style is half-narrative and half-dialogue. I believe a story should be told through dialogue instead of narration. Narrative should only be used for non-story stuff like describing a scenery, at the start of a new story arc etc. But in his case, the story has lot more narration than needed making it more of an essay and less of a novel.

   Coming to the story, the first bad thing is, this is going to be another trilogy and the book ends with Raavan kidnapping Sita. He also made lot of references to the Shiva Trilogy (Nagas, Vayuputras, Malayaputras, Somras, even Meluha), some of which seemed forced instead of part of narrative. The whole episode of Manthara's daughter(I already forgot her name) is unnecessary (Did he incorporate it after Rape became a national issue?) and definitely avoidable. The story arc neither aids the story nor results in character development. The fabled love story of Ram and Sita is horribly under-cooked. They barely interact with each other in the book even though it is love at first sight for Ram.

   It does have its moments like the ending lines of the book hinting that Sita is the real Vishnu not Ram, the ambiguity/mystery in Sita's character  and the reference to Ram's life at his birth, both having troubles in his life and becoming a legendary King. Except a couple more such points, it has nothing else to offer.

Having said all this, I might still buy the next book as my fondness and pride for the Indian epics will nudge me to read the rest of this series. I keep wondering what if Amish was a first rate author. Then Indian Epics would have received the world-wide fame they deserve for their complexity and Epic nature.



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