Literary specs

Health Tourism - balanced analysis

2008-05-28T07:17:00.001-07:00

I just read a post on the blog Sid Knows Why.

This post takes a good stab at analysing the recently published report in Mckinsey Quarterly on Medical tourism. Some of the arguments given here are very appealing. This shows how there is a risk in this industry of hype overtaking reality as credible resources are also being challenged on their research.

Good luck Sid. Also read Ted the Med which throws further light on the topic.

Medical Tourism in India

2008-04-15T23:15:00.001-07:00

Value Medicare provides medical and recuperative services to patients traveling to India. Medical Tourism is a rapidly growing industry in India and Value Medicare is one the leading players in this market. They provide the patients access to cost effective complex medical procedures such as knee replacement surgery, hip replacement surgery, cardiac by pass surgery etc. and elective procedures in dental and cosmetic surgery.

Visit the website www.valuemedicare.com

The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)

2007-08-15T02:15:00.000-07:00

Grapes of Wrath is perhaps the most noteworthy and famous novel based on the economic downturn termed as "Great Depression" in the US in early 30's. The story revolves around an Oklahoma family amongst hundreds of thousands of poor people migrating to California in search of living. The state of Oklahoma was particularly hit during those times by mechanization of agriculture and Dust Bowl drought.

In the story, the Joads sell off their house and land to move from their hometown to (deceptively) promising land of California in vain hope of finding a living. Living frugal, almost miserable lifestyle the Joads foraged fruit picking farms to earn as little as 2.5 cents per hour. All kind of mishaps occur during the course of the journey and afterwards; both grandma and granddad pass away on the way, Rose of Sharon (the daughter of the family) gives birth to a stillborn child, Casy - a preacher who had accompanied the family on this errand is killed for leading a strike against low labor costs. Tom Joad, the lead protagonist, a guy with a short temper in return kills the guy who attacked Casy. Tom had returned from the prison after getting a parole, convicted of killing someone in a fit of fury in the beginning of the story.

The immigrants are despised in California and looked upon as a potential threat by the owners of farm lands. Casy and later Tom finally understand the need for cooperative, as opposed to individualistic, solutions in times of misery.

Verdict: Serious, depressing, inflicted with misery.

"Surely, you're joking Mr. Feynman" (Richard P. Feynman)

2007-08-07T00:43:00.000-07:00

Richard Feynman, the author of this humorous book about incidents of his life is the Nobel Prize winner for Physics in 1965. Feynman titillates the reader with his entertaining anecdotes which depict stratospheric brilliance of this physicist. Jack of all trades is more like it- he fixed radios at the age of 12, went to MIT, Princeton, Cornell, was a safecracker for fun, an artist and an amazing prankster. What is more, he also had his way with pick up lines for girls in the bars.

Verdict: This is an extremely entertaining story about a scientist with characteristic brilliance, intelligence and uncharacteristic versatility. Will have you in stitches.

A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess)

2007-08-01T10:17:00.000-07:00

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

ACO is the story of Alex and his droogies Pete, George and Dim who sneak out of their homes in the night to indulge into unlawful activities like ultraviolence, rape and looting. Alex is ditched by his accomplices while committing a crime and jailed. While in the jail, he volunteers to get enrolled for a human aversion therapy trial to escape from the bound of the prison. But to Alex's shock, the aversion therapy treatment turns out to be an atrocious nightmare. He is acclimatized to hate any violence and becomes so docile as a result that he cannot even do self-defense if someone is attacking him.

The novel is written in a narration form with Alex being the narrator. The language used by Alex and his droogies 'NADSAT' is invented by the author and is a combination of English and Russian.

Verdict: Great story depicting trials and tribulations in the life of a teen renegade. The language NADSAT makes it a bit difficult to read without referring to its glossary.

The Paradox of Choice (Barry Schwartz)

2007-07-25T02:20:00.000-07:00

"The Paradox of Choice" is a book about a topic that worries me big league sometimes which is the gargantuan number of choices available for almost everything in our life and getting your way around them or rather out of them. I should hasten to point out that this is my first read of what comes closest to a self help book. Haha.

Barry Schwartz categorizes people into two types based on the way they choose - one is Maximizer, someone who has the proclivity to hunt down all the stores in the town for buying a little nothing and the other is Satisfier who would buy something that is just good enough. We all are maximizer in some respect and Satisfier in other.

Verdict: This book deserves rapt attention of people who like to be over-exacting even while buying a toothbrush from a grocery. For others, it does not offer a great bang for the buck. (For instance, I got it imported into the country but found most things as motherhood and apple pie stuff). Also, Barry Schwartz has an untiring desire to depict every human behavior with a psyche experiment, which puts you off at times. The TED talk by Barry Schwartz is much utilitarian.

The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

2007-06-09T23:45:00.000-07:00

"For you, a thousand times over" - the assurance given by Hassan to Amir symbolizes the book - The Kite Runner written by Khaled Hosseini. Hassan, a hazara (low caste) childhood playmate of Amir and his father serve Amir's family based in Peshawar. Hassan is always willing to consecrate his entire being on Amir. Amir grew up with his baba and did not have the strength of character as his baba would want. He would throw up due to motion sickness and lacked natural toughness. To gain respect in front of baba's eyes, Amir tries to win a kite flying competition. He manages to win the kite flying competition but loses the biggest thing - self-respect. Hassan gets sodomized by a bully Assef as he runs to get a kite for Amir who turns his back to Hassan. Amir lives with the guilt of deceitfulness through his life for lack of courage.

Amir and his baba flee to US for a comfortable life, as political unrest engulfs Afghanistan. Amir gets married to an Afghani girl Soraya before baba's cancer stops his wanderings on earth. Years after, Amir's guilt takes him back to Afghanistan where he faces the utter truth that Hassan was related to Amir as brother. He further gets to know that Hassan has passed away in an atrocity by the Taliban who usurped the rein of the country and Hassan's son Sohrab is living in an orphanage where the caretaker is trading children to run the expenses. Amir determines to overcome his guilt by safeguarding Sohrab. But, as the luck would have it, Amir runs into Assef again who is now a part of the Taliban and has the custody of Sohrab. They both engage in a duel when eventually Sohrab uses his slingshot to poke out one eye of Assef. Amir eventually takes Sohrab back to US with him.

Verdict: The Kite Runner is a brutal story of a lifetime spend in difficulties, but a happy ending. Apart from occasional mullah naseeruddin jokes, its a serious read but keeps the reader glued to the book due to the interesting plot.

Three men in a Boat (Jerome K. Jerome)

2007-06-01T09:56:00.000-07:00

Three Men in a Boat is a classic, light humor novel from Jerome K. Jerome. What does the idea of a river boat trip bring to your mind? It tickles your brain giving feelings of fun, small pleasures, good times - which is what this book is all about. It features endless such incidents.

This one is quite unique in terms of writing style and comic incidents. The narrator seems to be in an incredible mood of telling stories. Every now and then he stops and gives a hearty description of anecdotes related to the situation he is currently facing. And then, he describes anecdotes linked to the anecdotes he has already linked to the current situation in front of him. Jerome has created most of the humor by plotting hyperbole situations - like the incident of hanging a painting on a wall by one of narrator's uncle, the narrator willing to pay the world for mustard, Harris being attacked by swans etc. Its all hilarious and very therapeutic.

Verdict: Good quick relaxing read.

Nothing but Drafts

2007-05-25T03:22:00.000-07:00

No full stops in India (Mark Tully)

2007-05-18T03:19:00.000-07:00

Mark Tully's "No Full Stops in India" takes stock of various sociocultural aspects of India. He delves in detail about religious hypocrisies and contradictions. He talks about demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Godhra incident, making of the TV series Ramayana amongst other topics touched by him. His culture shock and frustrations from religious fanaticism are seemingly evident.
The book presents further well researched topics by Tully such as suicide epidemic of Indian farmers, history of Kashmir which is tinged with tragedies, NGOs overclaiming/ exaggerating to get support, Tehelka scam not to forget his encounter with Chandrababu Naidu, the CM of Andhra Pradesh during his heyday when he was trying to convert AP into a cyber world for India. He concludes "India depicts miracles of order amongst chaos".

Medical Tourism in India

2007-04-15T12:54:00.000-07:00

Visit the website www.valuemedicare.com

India Unbound (Gurcharan Das)

2006-08-18T18:23:00.000-07:00

Gurcharan Das, whom most of us know as a columnist in Times of India is a graduate of HBS, has been the CEO of P&G. Currently, he's a VC and industry consultant with some literary feathers on his hat. This guy is in the trenches as far as the socio cultural background of India is concerned. I like his Op-eds for novelty of ideas especially.

In the book "India Unbound", Gurcharan marinates the reader with the social, political, economic and cultural issues that India has faced since the time of Independence before he ballparks the whole discussion by saying that India would never have the speed but would always have the momentum. He attributed the slow (or no) growth of India in the past to "Kafkaesque bureaucratic control" in the form of License Raj; India missing the bus on Industrialisation and the mixed economy which combined the worst features of socialism and capitalism.

This was an insighful read (ahem ahem) and does a good job of putting together various related events in India's history to give the final verdict on India's potential.

The Brothers Karamazov

2006-04-02T12:42:00.000-07:00

Brothers Karamazov written by Fyodor Dostoevsky is supposedly one of the greatest Russian books written till date. It was written by Dostoevsky in 1879 - the last days of his life. The english language is very typical of those times. Another striking feature I noticed about the language was how it changes from character to character, and the narrator speaks in different style too. No don't get me wrong - no complicated stuff, simple plain English. But the problem is that the book is too bulky. Dostoevsky has taken too many words (or pages should I say) to build characters thus making it boring at times. I mean look at other books of the same size - take Lord of the Rings for example, it is a million times more interesting and has hundred times more 'story' compared to events described by Dostoevsky spanning less than a year. I only developed some interest towards the second half of the book which was not so preachy and monotonous as the first part.

Another quite unique feature of this book is how narrator starts talking to the reader about what is he going to talk about. This made reading the book more like a story listening excercise which I quite liked. Towards the end of the book I was desperately waiting for an Ayn Rand sort of long speech to justify everything but there was none.
I do recommend reading this book ONLY IF you have a lot of time and patience.

Catch 22 - weird

2006-02-08T11:35:00.000-08:00

This is the fourth time I have picked up this book and the only time I have crossed the threshold of first five chapters. Its full of most wierd stuff you can imagine. No character seems sane, which is what actually happens too in wartime. In wartime, the soldiers lose their prudence; everyone is just following order without actually thinking whether they are right or wrong. These first five chapters have some really weird stuff happening which is:

Orr says "I did it to protect my good reputation...Everytime someone asked me why I was walking around with crab apples in my cheeks, I'd just open my hands and shoe them it was rubber balls I was walking around with, not crab apples, and that they were in my hands, not my cheeks"!!
Colonel Cargill, used to be a marketing executive paid by Wall Street firms to fail at marketing so that they could establish tax losses!!
Havermeyer likes to shoot mice in the middle of the night and he once woke Hungry Joe with a shot that compelled him to dive into a slit trench. These slit trenches had mysteriously appeared beside every tent the morning following the mess officer Milo Minderbinder's bombing of the squadron!!
Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen starts a panic among the officers in Rome by telephoning them and saying only, "T. S. Eliot"!!
Everyone is calling everyone else crazy!!
Catch-22, a regulation holding that, in order to be grounded for insanity, a pilot must ask to be grounded; but any pilot who asks to be grounded must be sane, since sane people would never want to fly bombing missions!!

I hope I would be able to finish this one, without tearing it apart.

The Catcher in the Rye

2006-01-20T12:12:00.000-08:00

The Catcher in the Rye, written by J. D. Salinger is the story of sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield. Holden has been expelled from his school for flunking in four subject out of five. He is largely alienated from the people around him and describes every next person as..wuddyacallit "phoney". For him, phoniness stands as an emblem of everything that's wrong around him and gives him an excuse to withdraw into his isolation. As the novel progresses, we perceive that Holden's alienation is his way of self-protection. He uses his isolation as proof that he is better than everyone else and therefore above interacting with them. At the beginning of the novel, Holden hints that he has been hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, the story of which is revealed over the course of the novel.

Mark David Chapman is believed to have drawn his inspiration for assassinating John Lennon, ex Beatle from this novel. However, I couldn't find something as disturbing in the novel.

If you read this novel and like it, I also recommend watching Taxi Driver (1976) directed by Martin Scorsese featuring Rober De Niro which is based on urban alienation.

O Brave New World

2006-01-07T23:37:00.000-08:00

I read the two most talked about novels on dystopian fiction one after the other - 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; which has compelled me to compare the two.
The two novels contrast in many ways:

While 1984 describes a world of suffering, torture, war etc. ; in Brave New World its just the opposite with war, crime and pain missing.
Another difference is that in 1984 people are kept in the dark about administrative matters by mass surveillance and thought police while in Brave New World the people are engineered to consider this knowledge irrelevant.
In 1984 the people are dehumanised by the state controlling their natural instincts such as sex or free thought, even taking away the ability to conceptualise revolution by adopting a new language Newspeak; in Brave New World the administration grants free rein to basic human instincts such as sex and taking soma.
In 1984 the human races are all equal while in Brave New World the caste distinction is quite pronounced.

There are endless related media work and literature on the concept of dystopian society adapted from these novels. Overall, amongst the two I recommend reading 1984 even though its a bit depressing.

Novel list

2006-01-03T23:17:00.000-08:00

List of novels I remember having read:

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabreil Garcia Marquez)
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
1984 (George Orwell)
An area of Darkness (V S Naipaul)
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance (Robert Pirsig)
Blindness (Jose Saramago)
One (Richard Bach)
Rebecca (Daphne Du Maurier)
Godfather (Mario Puzo)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
Anne Frank: The diary of a young girl (Anne Frank)
The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
The Beach (Alex Garland)
Lord of the Rings (J R R Tolkein)
Harry Potter I, II, III, IV (J K Rowling)
5 point someone (Chetan Bhagat)
The Inscruttable Americans (Anurag Mathur)
Those Days (Sunil Gangopadhyay)
Tamas (Bhisham Sahni)
Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
Not a penny more not a penny less (Jeffrey Archer)
Eleventh Commandment (Jeffrey Archer)
Odessa Files (Frederick Forsyth)
Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
Atlas shrugged (Ayn Rand)
On the Road (Jack Kerouac)

Ok this is indeed a smallish list. Back to reading.