The Inscrutable Americans - Anurag Mathur

The American way of living is totally different from ours. What if someone from a small Indian town visits US, and stays there for one year? How will he cope up with the Americans, who, according to him, seems to be highly mysterious in their way of behavior? That's what the author is trying to describe in this fun filled novel.

Gopal, whose family owns a hair oil factory, and who wants to be a part of the same business, is going to America for doing a diploma in Chemical engineering. His foolishness and disastrous English, made him run into a lot of trouble. He got an American friend, Randy, who was totally amazed by the fact that Gopal was still a virgin. Randy was so keen to destroy Gopal's virginity but it was not an easy task for him.

Gopal was tried to stick to the instructions given by his grand mother, and he searched for a restaurent where the cook was a brahmin. Obviously, he couldn't find one and later, he found himself eating beef, without knowing what it was. The American life and the friendship with Randy changed him so much that he started to drink beer and go to late night parties. Towards the end of his course, he was entirely transformed and he was desperate to lose his virginity. His best idea to impress a girl was to take his certificate along with him and to show her his grades. At last, he ended up fucking an Indian lady during his flight back to India.

The story is just about average, according to me. Even though there are a lot of humorous occasions through out the story, all of them lack a genuineness. Gopal's transformation seemed too quick and slightly unbelievable.

Into the 2nd week @ office

Now, I am into the second week at my office. I am learning new things everyday, though not in a very fast pace. On the first two days,I was very uncomfortable, sitting on a chair in front of the computer for the whole day. I got exasperated very quickly. I would walk around every now and then, wash my face, send a message to someone or simply sit with my eyes shut. I would feel demented towards the end of the office time. But, things are getting better now.

In spite of the learning part, there are certain other positives also. Engineering life had destroyed all my concentration and listening skill. all that is getting better here.

Here in the office, when ever I am asked to go through a document or something, my boss insists that I will have to ask at least a few number of questions from it. If there aren't enough number of questions, I will have to read again.

The biggest challenge that I'm facing now is to find time for other activities, especially reading. My typical day since I joined looks like this. A quick look at the newspaper, office, couple of phone calls.. that's it... zzzz... But now it seems that I will have to reduce my sleeping ours, which I haven't done ever since I joined Engg. college.

Anyways, I'll try to balance everything in the coming days. Wonder what all things are in store for me...

The white tiger - Aravind Adiga

The book needs no introduction. White tiger has won the booker prize and it had to face some serious allegations just the same way slumdog millionaire did.

The story begins as the author being a rich businessman in Bangalore. He descries his story to Mr. Jibao and that's how the dark incidents unfolds.

His name was Balram Halwai, and he belonged to a rural village near to Gaya. According to the author, feudalism still remains in those parts of the country. The lords live, torturing and exploiting the lower caste people. And the people who belong to the lower castes all are destined to be loyal servants, till their death. Their families in the village were used as a means to keep them under threat. The families of all those who showed disobedience got murdered. The lords had enough money to bribe police and politicians were all their friends.

Balram, somehow, manages to be a driver though people of his caste are usually sweet makers. He remains as a very loyal servant to his master, Ashok, who runs coal business. Ashok walks through corrupted ways to run his business and to get maximum profit out of it. Being his driver, balram was a witness to all of these.

One day, Balram gets tired of being a servant. He splits Ashok's head open with a liquor bottle and runs away with a whole lot of money. No one identified him even though police distributed a wanted poster with his face on it. Author tells that in India, such posters are printed with a photo which would be so vague that it could be any one of half the people in India.

Balram ran to Bangalore and started a cab service for bringing people to and from call centers. He used all the corrupt ways that he oberved and learned from his master. The story ends Balram being a highly successful entreprenuer in Banglore.

Adiga criticizes a lot of traditions and practices that we still have in country. In India, especially in the north, servants are treated very badly. Balram, once had to face a murder charge when his master's wife hit and killed a child while driving. Even though we brag about all the development, author reminds us that there are certain fundamental things to be changed. Our political system is to be entirely transformed. One of the reasons which holds our country back is our corrupt political system. The first step should be the development of rural areas and ensuring minimum standard of living even to the poor people. The educational system in India creates only half baked people, and they all become good for nothings.

I liked the book very much, especially the humor blended with the criticisms. What ever Aravind Adiga has written is true, according to me also. It is such a book which will inspire people to change the current situation of our country.

Beginning of a new life

written on July 13th, 2009


For me, life has taken a new turn. Things are totally different since last Thursday. I have joined Webyfy Infotech, where I got placed towards the end of my college life.

Obviously, life has become totally different. I have been lazy even to move my ass from the chair during my college life. Now, as soon as I have joined, I have started to learn new things, that too at a very fast pace. It takes time for me to adjust and get to it completely. I am not totally settled, still have to figure out a routine so that I will have enough time for my activities like blogging, reading, movies, music, puzzle solving. etc. At the same time, I have to work effectively, eat well and do proper exercise. I have moved to the new place and it seems pretty good and comfortable.

I have to be in the office from 9.30 to 7 in the evening. The best part of being in the office is that I get a chance to talk and listen to a lot of people with better knowledge than me. In the first two days, I was into learning the basics of HTML and XML. I have started to learn the different actions involved in the development of IvR (Interactive voice response) systems. My company is dealing mainly with IVR soft wares. So that is what I am going to learn in detail.

The feeling that 'I have got a job' is good. I like it. Hope things won't change in future. And hopefully, my company will do extremely well once we start marketing in a big way, probably by the middle of next month.

A single life time is not enough..

Now, after a long time, I feel like blogging. At present, em at banglore, with my sister. I have just completed a significant phase of my life and em about to enter the next one. I will be joining for job within two weeks. I had no ideas about how to spend these days which I am getting in between. Now, I am doing nothing other than eating, sleeping, roaming around in the city, watching movies, friends and prison break(em about to finish it). Thats where the thoughts about blogging came in. Earlier, there were times when I thought of writing about something but couldn't.

Eating, sleeping, and watching movies and serials were the things that I did mostly during my B tech life also. Movies, serials etc. were very much abundant in my hostel. I could find plenty of those in the local area network. And I was a little bit worried about the availability of all of these after I leave. That was why I bought a portable hard disc and stored plenty of movies for watching later. Now am watching them one by one, but I realized one thing. It would take at least two years for me to finish this much number of movies.

A few days ago, somewhere I read that a new type of data storage disc was invented in Australia which could store around two thousand movies in a single disc. This was made possible by recording in multiple frequencies. I was wondering how much time will it take a person to watch that much number of movies. Technology is growing so fast and life is changing every day. Newer comforts and innovations are arriving almost every second. Now, a single lifetime might not be enough to explore the options that technology offers.

So, the next challenge that science faces might be to increase our life span. But what if all the people in our generation get an extended lifetime? What about the coming generations? That will create a catastrophe for sure..

Now, why am I writing all these nonsense? even I don't know. This wasn't what I wanted to write, but this is what I ended up writing. Late night... feeling sleepy.. so that's all for now...