Lisbeth Salander 0.4

                                                                    

2013 was the year when I completed the three books by Stieg Larsson which later on became popular as the Millennium series. The books followed the tale of Lisbeth  Salander. The Girl in the Spider's Web is set against a larger literary canvas. Some characters are new and the old characters are explored and examined in a closer manner.  The fourth installment is indeed a bold attempt by the author - David Lagercrantz to create a story without tampering have with the original tale. This is a sequel which does not spoil the beauty of the the millennium trilogy.  

The story is essentially the tale of some individuals who are trapped in a lonely world. The main representatives being Blomqvist - a journalist who is leading a lonely life enduring many setbacks in his writing career. He is in the lookout for something fresh and new. His superior is Berger who doesn't have any qualms of sharing physical space with get lawfully wedded husband and Blomqvist. The main protagonist, Salander is caught up in the act of romancing the machines and keeping a protective eye on the lives of people whom she care about. The police officer Bublanski is always seeking spiritual solace from his Rabbi. 

The fourth installment pitches Salander against her twin sister Camila and she takes care of August - the child prodigy. The sinking publishing house Millennium in a way represents the old school publishing style and Salander with her super-hacking skills represents the new age technology driven style of publishing. 

I enjoyed reading this title both on my iPad mini, iPhone and Kindle paper white. I was enchanted with the voice of Simon and Vance and downloaded the audiobook. I am sure that listening to the audio version would help me to understand the story and the place names in a better way. I would rate the printed book as 3 out of 5 and I hope that the re-reading of the book using the audio version will be a better experience. 

The protean nature of Twitter in the context of the Chennai floods...

Dedicated to Dr K. Elango - My inspiration and guiding light. (Sir, You are always there in my mind even if we haven’t seen and met for a long time. I would like to make a special mention of the collaborative work which we did when you were leading the training team in Loyola, Chennai. It was about Disaster Management and the ESL tasks that we can create from it. The blog below is one way or the other is inspired by that article which got published in The Hindu)

The city of Chennai is something that is close to my heart. A city that has immensely contributed to my development as a person and as a teacher. It was shocking to see the familiar roads and streets inundated with water. It was as if the whole city was getting a thorough natural cleansing. The city as I know it was on the brink of a collapse. The government system failed and for a few days there were no official announcements. There was an eerie official silence and Chennaites were clueless about the future. Like the many pictures that were circulated online of people trapped on the rooftops of their own houses, the only thing that they could do was wait.

Living a life away from all this scenario made me make use of the only social window that I love - Twitter. I was constantly following up the updates which appeared under the hashtag #chennaifloods. As I was monitoring the Twitter timeline, I could notice the protean nature of the tweets.

In the first stage, there was utter confusion as the tweets were showing the pictures of mass destruction and the screenshots of weather forecast which warned of greater damage and destruction. There was panic all around and people were trying to reach out to their loved ones. I could sense a feeling of virtual camaraderie shaping up and it extended beyond the affected zone. The closure of the airport and the suspension of the train services got a special mention in the tweets. There were many instances of photoshopped images misinforming the public about escaped crocodiles from the park.

In the second stage, the tweetrati was busy offering help and relief materials. By this time, even the government agencies woke up to the grim reality of the flood. The mobile companies offered free talktime and data packages to assist the flood victims. There was an uproar regarding the way Amma devotees were forcibly sticking Amma posters on the relief materials. There were co-ordinated attempts from different corners of the world to lend a helping hand to the victims. Twitter timeline was filled with posters like - Save Chennai,Pray for Chennai. Since Chennai is regarded as the home of South Indian cinema, there were many stars who chipped in with their contributions and help.

The third stage, Twitter was alive with instructions and advices for a post-flood situation. It included ways to stop the spread of epidemics and issues regarding personal hygiene and sanitation. It was interesting to see how the timeline was alive with suggestions on how to take care of the cars and electronic devices that were submerged in the water.

It is unequivocal that it is easy to comment upon a situation from a far away place. I will never know the true hardships that my friends and well wishers had for a time window of two weeks. I hope they are all safe and sound.

God bless them all...

Spectre - A 5 point review

The world is sceptical about Bond movies. They say that the Bond played by Daniel Craig is too old. They complain about the story line. There is also this issue about exhausting Ian Fleming's collection of Bond tales. Nothing of the above deterred me from watching this 24th Bond movie and here are my impressions about the movie: 

1) The movie can be termed as a tetralogy. The fourth in the series which began with

    Casino Royale followed by Quantum of Solace and Sky Fall. 

2) For a die-hard Bond fan, the movie offers momentary trips down the memory lane.

    The music and the gadgets never fails to hold the attention and the fascination. 

3)  The personal and the other side of agent 007 is revealed in this movie or the first time the viewer is shown the living quarters of Bond and you will be astonished to see it as cluttered and unorganized. The conversation between Money Penny. The movie also reveals how lonely Bond is.

     James Bond: [over the phone] Who was that?

     Moneypenny: He's just a friend.

     James Bond: At this hour of the night?

     Moneypenny: It's called life, James. You should try it some time.

4) Bond movies are famous for their one-liners. The one which will stay with us long after we     leave the theater is - You're a kite dancing in a hurricane Mr.Bond. 

5) The villians in the Bond movies sometimes overshadow the titular hero himself. Most of          the times these villians are well crafted and are endowed with an one-liner like this one          in Spectre - Blofeld: [to Bond] Cuckoo! 

Now waiting for the 25th......

10 things I liked about - The Opposite of Loneliness by Merina Keegan

The Opposite of Loneliness

• The writing style seems to border on the occasional flashes of wisdom and orginal thinking. The style can be termed as 'felt writing’.

• The formats employed for the writing is ingenious and is quite refreshing. ‘The Emerald City’ set in the context of the war on terror, develops through the exchange of letters and shows gradual progression especially in terms of the protagonist’s transformation into a ‘jihadi'.
  
• The author is a quite accomplished person. She did her internships at the Paris Review and the New Yorker. She also was a research assistant with Harold Bloom. I read a review of the book in the Goodreads app which said that the only reason why the book was a success was because of the pre-mature death of the author. I have reasons to differ with the reviewer. The reviewer comfortably ignores the fact that she is a prodigy. In her writings, she has reiterated the fact that there is always the possibility of doing something in this world. 

  “Maybe I’m ignorant and idealistic but i just feel like we can do something really cool to this world"

    The Guardian reviewer clearly states that 

  "she never had the chance to lose her youthful idealism". 

• The idea or concept of the 'cinematic gaze’ was something that had always enthralled me. As tourists roaming around the capital city of Delhi, we have come across the xenophobic tendencies of my country men. We overheard Chinese being ridiculed as Chinese Manchurian and the white skinned ladies being stalked by teenagers begging for a selfie. This anti-social traits is one of the spin-off effects of technology. The non-fiction piece titled ’The Art of Observation’ talks about this 'gaze upon the foreigners’ from the POV of Merina and her friend when they visited India. Her moral stand in this regard is 

  "If it made them happy,after all,why not play along?"

• The way the reader is introduced to the Toyota car in ‘Stability in Motion’ is quite innovative and fresh. She was able to develop the idea of a car into a well-composed non-fiction piece. She describes the car ‘as a vehicle crowded’ with ‘physical manifestations’ of her high school memories. 
• Some of her writings carries a foreboding the pre-mature death. The story ‘Winter Break’ has this sense and it also has the words ‘Don’t worry, I’m driving - the message conveyed to her mother. To borrow the esoteric construction from 'The Guardian’ - ‘

  "sentences written light heartedly are piercingly loud reminders of what will never be"

  
  
• One of the personal themes that I was able to read into the book was - Live happily and when you know that you are going to die, have a frame of mind of calmness and no-regrets. 
• I  need to comment on the presence of death in her writing. There is this sense of doom that permeates in her writing. We all tend to get emotional about death. To quote The Guardian ‘ her finite body of work inextricably and forever after bound up in the tragedy of her death, lending an understandable poignancy to much of the writing. It is the same feeling that we get when we watch - Fast and Furious 7 sans Paul Walker and The Dark Knight sans Heath Ledger. 
• The legacy of Merina Keegan - What she has left for a reader like me and others is something that should be documented. She had a short but meaningful stay on this earth. A productive and well-lived 22 years. She was quite optimistic about life. She wrote in her final essay for the Yale Daily News, the opposite of loneliness - 

  "We’re so young, We’re twenty two years old. We have so much time"

  This is the temperament that she has left for us. Two poetic expression that appear in my mind are,  
  
  Rabi Ben Ezra - Robert Browning 
  Grow old along with me!
  The best is yet to be,
  The last of life, for which the first was made:
  Our times are in His hand
  Who saith "A whole I planned,
  Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!''

Dylan Thomas - Do not go gentle into that good night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

The following themes in the books appealed to me: 

• The bug killer and the human side of a menial job.
• The trapped sailors in the submarine.
• The U.S marine and his emails to his girl.
• The girl who was allergic to gluten.
• The sense of loss after death of a love one.
• The sense of loss after the death of loved ones.
• The train journey through the Indian heartland 
• The 'elegiac essay’ about the first car.
• The child who was the Jesus under study for a Christmas  
      event.
• The placement test and the employability patterns at Yale    
      University.
  
  The themes are varied and are drawn from different sources. This gives me the idea that it is not a book or a movie that should serve as the prompt for me to write. It should be the life that I see around me. As writers around the world are engaged in NANOWRIMO, this is the thought that should take me forward. 

10 lessons from The Martian

10 lessons from The Martian

1. Always find some ingenious ways to survive adversities.
2. There is nothing like quitting, keep trying.
3. Always do the right calculations before taking the big leap.
4. Try to maintain a healthy and emotional bonding with your team.
5. Maintain your emotional equilibrium with some cool songs.
6. Make a timeline for the actvities that you undergo, however insignificant they may seem to you.
7. Talk to yourself, write to yourself and record your thoughts.
8. Discover what is important and just do it
9. Spend some quality time reflecting on your life and activities.
10. Don’t lose hope.

The online course and me

For the first time in my life i enrolled for an online course and I found the following to be the exciting features of the same.

•  It is important that the participant is quite honest about the
      course and the completion of course content.
•  I did have a doubt about the programme managers ??? who
      may steal valuable personal information plus the ideas  
      shared in the course may violate the intellectual property  
      rights.
• The participant should be committed and ready for the
      course. He should introspect and find the most convienent    
      time and space for himself.
• It is interesting to see eager students from around the world.
     They defintely will inspire and make us work better. 
• The presentation structure is quite lucid and clear. 
• The course also proves the point that real learning happens
      even in the absence of the real teacher. 
• The teaching style is interspersed with tasks and videos.

The Simple Acts

“To be simple is not a simple thing” 

 E.E Tian Hong ( On Writing) 

A few months back, I had started noticing all around me acts of simpleness and austerity. This blog is all about the concept of simplitude which is quite essential for a balanced and satisfied life. It takes a huge amount of sacrifice and patience to be simple. There are external ( society, financial) and internal factors ( discipline, will-power) that makes people lead a simple life. 

I remember reading somewhere that we live in a world of excess. We have everything and sometimes it is difficult to take a stock of the materialsitic things that we have. Today the adage ‘Each one according to their means and not according to their greed’ has become a cliched one. This buying power, that we enjoy is so shocking that it has turned us into monsters imbued with a feeling of self-importance and self neglect. We have lost oursleves in this act of hording that it has become mindless and  self-destructive. 

I have seen people who turns off their cellular data when it is not required. There are people, with great eye-strain and difficulty read e-books on their small screen sized smart phones. There is one trainee who created a practical and minimalistic logo using a simple software like MS Excel and MS Paint. I met a trainee once who was using a pencil which hardly fitted in her hand.

It took more than three months for me to publish this post. I was preoccupied and maybe I have forgotten all about living the simple ways of life.