Trip to Pune - Day 2

 Day 2 began quietly at Magarpatta. I was woken up by A who had found this wonderful book called 'Save the Cat' on screenplay writing and had sat up all night to read it. I guess she woke me up at 530 or 6 and we sat up chatting. Now Kalpak has a fine collection of books and so does Gauri and so does Prakash. In fact I could see a pile of books that Gauri had kept aside for the teachers in her school. There was a similar pile in Kalpak's room to give away from which I picked up three books.

My tree series

Malay's award winning design - building

Prakash was up for his morning walk and so A and I joined him on the walk around Magarpatta. Prakash explained how the Magars got together to form this wonderful initiative on their land - some 128 families got together. He showed A the five elements that were represented in Magarpatta - fire, water, air, earth and ether. He explained the landscaping - the trees that lined avenues here and there. It was a fun experience.

Trees

Back home in an hour, we were sipping tea when Kalpak joined us and chatted with A. After that he showed us his bonsai collection. Now Kalpak does some very interesting things and I loved the care and thought he puts into his bonsai collection. We spoke of books and stuff and then he had to go to work.

Kalpak and his bonsai collection

Sample 1 

Another

Laxman came and gave me a fine massage after which I got some sleep, lunch and then we were off to Kothrud in a cab. Soon after the girls walked off to Durga Cafe for a cold coffee, something A wanted to do with Mansi (she told me they would go by themselves which made sense). They enjoyed their outing and returned just in time for dinner at Manik ajji's house.

Off to Durga Cafe

We returned home and crashed. I think the girls were up till late in the night though they made some ambitious plans for the next day. So far, so good.     

Trip to Pune - Day 1

 Anjali promised Mansi she would show her Pune - the Pune she knows and Mansi agreed. So soon as their Board exams got done they planned the trip and so on the 29th of March all of us hopped on to the Shatabdi Express to check off some of the items off the list. Durga cafe was one, Konkan Express was another, Marz-O-Rin was another, Barometer, a trek perhaps.

The train journey was fun. I decided to be the one to capture their special journey together - they have been together since their play school days which is 14 long years - and now they will be going to different schools. So I started taking pics right from the railway platform at Begumpet and all through the journey.

The Shatabdi food seems to have become slightly more in terms of volume and items but they somehow decided to give us only half a litre of water which got over pretty fast. And then, the catering guys said they had no more water. After much asking they finally got one bottle from a distant compartment.

I finished reading Murakami's Men Without Women which was a nice feat. At Pune we got a cab to Magarpatta and paid our customary visit to Gauri's house. 

She was up at 12, served us some food, and then we slept off. The girls did not - apparently they were up most of the night. Now that's how holidays should be! 

The Accidental Billionaires - Ben Mezrich

 This is the story that inspired the movie 'The Social Network' on Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg. It is interesting to see how Mark builds his company, his single most desire to do whatever it takes to make the company reach its full potential.

The book begins with identical twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (rowing champions who went on to represent the US in the 2008 Olympics and who later on became bitcoin billionaires) and their friend Divya Narendra, working on a project - a site called Harvard Connection. Their coder leaves them midway so they hire a junior Mark Zukerberg to complete the coding. Midway through this project Mark gets an idea to start thefacebook, a site that allows people to share their profiles and make friends on campus. The brothers realise that Mark had lied to them when he said he was busy and that he may have got the idea for Facebook from their social networking site. But Mark is adamant and says he only helped them and that his idea was his own. He teams up with his senior Eduardo Saverin who funds him initially until they test it out. It becomes a huge hit and soon Saverin finds himself out of the company as well as Sean Parker, the man who founded and lost Napster and Plazzo, walks in an helps Mark take it to the next level - with an investment from Peter Thiel. The Winklevoss brothers and Saverin fight their battles legally and it is said that they have been settled with.

Few things interested me. That you cannot grow something big with the same team - sometimes you need a different energy if this team is not open to growth. The leader is important and his single minded commitment is important - here Mark's was important - Saverin could not see the big picture as Sean Parker did. Mark's single minded focus to take Facebook to its potential is what gave him the clarity to make the tough choices - which included dumping Parker when he messes up. And that one line - that Mark had given up a million dollar job with Microsoft and that money was not his driver was another highly interesting feature. I found the Winklevoss brothers most fascinating too - such achievers.

Enjoyed the book though it has a style that annoyed me. The content made up for it. Mezrich himself is a Harvard grad who wrote ten books.   

3 Zaika Mansion - Gouri Dange

 I really think Gouri is among the finest fiction writers we have. She has this capacity to tell a complex, layered story with great economy in a manner that everyone understands what the story is about, what it is trying to say, who the characters are and where it is set. Not many writers can claim to leave all these elements in the reader's minds - they may stun and shock and awe but nothing remains.

So the story begins in an old Muslim household surviving on past glory living in 3 Zaika Mansion. Two brothers, one on each floor, live in the old building, with their aged mother and their broken families. The children of the older brother Naseer - Shaheen, Ehsaan, Ayesha and Farhan grow up in a conflicted atmosphere where their mother's relative comes and plonks himself in their home, and slowly starts claiming more space than required, instigating the mother to take decisions that further split the family. He manages to put their father in a sanitorium for the mentally ill, probably has an affair with the mother, gets Shaheen married off to a demanding family where she is treated like a typical daughter-in-law. The family disintegrates - Ayesha commits suicide, Ehsaan leaves, Shaheen has a terrible marriage and her only child Juhi starts blaming her for her father's accident and distances herself. Alone, Shaheen finds solace and family in the most unlikely of places. Lovely ending. Someone should make a movie or a web series out of this.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Good going Gouri.    

By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept - Paulo Coelho

 I always wanted to read this book after my tryst with 'The Alchemist' but never got down to it. So when I found a copy in Gauri's 'giving away' pile I grabbed it.

 

A young girl caught in the demands of life - getting a job, earning a living etc - finds that her friend from school who had left to roam the world was coming to a town close by and goes to meet him. She realises he has somehow got some healing powers and everyone around him knew that he could work healing miracles and he is destined for some spiritual greatness. But when she meets him she realises he had always loved her and still loved her - and wanted to fight for her love. She loves the fact that he loves her but is confused - should she accept it and perhaps hinder his spiritual journey or should she give in? It ends nicely with both deciding that love is the final answer and get together.

What I found interesting is that in all the talk about Immaculate Conception and Virgin Mary, the young man says he is there to  show that the feminine side of God is equally powerful and must be recognised. A lot of fluff but that's the main theme as I found it. Many nice concepts hidden in the story too.  

Men Without Women - Haruki Murakami

 I have given up on Murakami until I got this gift again. It had some short stories and they were all simple and mostly relatable so I enjoyed reading them. 

There is one story about two friends - one of them sings the Beatles number 'Yesterday' to his own lyrics, and he has a childhood girl friend but he does not think he is good enough for her and sets her up with his friend. Sometime after that he disappears, the girl disappears and this third guy meets the girl after some twenty years and finds out that his friend had left and gone to the USA. But something had changed in the girlfriend when they had gone on that date and she moves on. Or the plastic surgeon who finally falls in love with a woman who leaves him and he dies - love sick. Or the actor who hires a girl to drive his car and reveals his story to her - of hid dead wife and how he had caught her with a colleague and made friends with that colleague to get his revenge. Or the woman who comes to the 'House' and not just helps the man but also sleeps with him - and always tells him stories - the one about how she broke into a house of an old boyfriend.

Stuff like that. Enjoyed reading.   

Coaching Stories No 21 - Things Are Not Happening - How Hard Should I Work

 Q. Things are not happening. How hard should I work?

Pic courtesy Mansi P

If things are not happening its because you are either not working hard enough or are working hard at the wrong things i.e. a lot of activity with no results. But first and foremost, if there is not enough effort from our side, we cannot achieve great results.

What is enough effort? Let's say, we just call it giving our best. What is our best?

Consider this example. If I ask you to run around a football field as long as you can and stop when you have reached your limit, you might give me 5 rounds and stop (hypothetically). That's what we normally do on our own - stop at our first sign of discomfort. It is human nature to put in only as much effort as it is needed to survive.

Then I ask you to give me some more effort, a couple of rounds. You humour me because you still have some gas left and run a couple and say that's it, no more. That's 7 rounds.

And then i tell you that if you do not run some more I will hit you with a stick...in fact I will hit you if you stop. You run for the fear of getting beaten up - and this time you will give me another 5 rounds lets say. We normally have that much left. That's 12 rounds.

You stop and say, that's the maximum and you don't mind getting beaten up. I then pull out a revolver and say I will shoot you if you do not run till you fall. You will run for your life, a few more rounds until you fall. That could pretty much be another 4-5 or more. 16 rounds!

You get the general idea. We stop well short of our limit. If we want something badly it must consume us, it must be the only thing on our mind almost. You must push until you fall, know your limit.

Sometime then you will find some doors unlocking. So, don't stop, go for it. Find your limit.You will find results.