Desiderata- Max Ehrman

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

http://mwkworks.com/desiderata.html

Notable Reads- 2017

2017 was a wonderful year of reading. Mostly because, Priya and Dhruv were in India for much of the winter and spring. The fantastic Hennepin County Library system helped too.  I wish I had something like this back when I was growing up. I had no less than 2-3 books on hand to read at all times

It also helped that I mostly stayed out of Fantasy. I tried reading more nonfiction and short stories than I typically do. Out of the 73, 25 were written by women which was another conscious choice. 7 books based on India/ written by Indian authors are also a high. As I did last year, I thought it would be a good idea to do a quick round-up of the good and bad reads from last year in no particular order

1.       Red Rising trilogy by Pierce Brown (YA, Sci Fi) - Okay, I know I am cheating by including the entire trilogy in a single entry. But, the books were fantastic. This was the Young Adult genre all grown up and on steroids. Recommended

2.       Justice by Michael J. Sandell (Non-fiction)- Adapted from a Harvard course that is also available on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY ), Justice tries to explore the big questions – from Justice to Morality. Highly Recommended.

3.       Arrival (or the Story of your life and others) by Ted Chiang(Sci fi, Short stories) This is by far the best science fiction that I read this year. Every single short story is a masterpiece. Liking what you see, Division by zero and Tower of Babylon are especially poignant . Highly Recommended.

4.       Bhima- Lone Warrior M.T. Vasudevan Nair(Literary)- Mahabharata like you have never seen before. This is told from Bhima’s point of view and looks at the characters from a fresh, if harsh perspective. Yudhishtra and Draupadi especially come off pretty badly in this one- Recommended

5.        The Vegetarian by Han Kang(Literary)- While the writing showed glimpses of beauty, I am not sure I got this one. I found the  whole thing a tedious mess.

6.       India after Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha(Non Fiction)- If you are an Indian and were to read just one book in your life, ethrow out your Harry Potter and read this. A brilliant examination of Indian history starting from 30^th January 1948 till 2010. His book brought home to me what a miracle India as it is today is. It also helped clear a lot of misconceptions that I had about important topics like the Constitution, Uniform civil code Kashmir, the linguistic states, the North Eastern states and Democracy as it is practiced in India. I have found new respect for the wonderful country that we were all born in, stalwarts like Ambedkar, Nehru, Sheikh Abdullah and Patel after reading this one. It has also opened my eyes on the seeds that were sown in the first years after independence that have grown to plague India today. Highly recommended

7.       Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead(Literary)- This deserves all the attention and accolades that it has received. Recommended

8.       All the Birds in the sky by Charlie Jane Anders (Sci fi) The worst book that I read in the last few years. I hate read this for a few days but I wish I had the time back. 

9.       Kashmir in Conflict by Victoria Schofield (Non Fiction)- If you want to understand the Kashmir issue, this is it. I saw a slight pro Pakistan slant. I also found some of the numbers mixed up and the spelling of places like Gujarat and Ayodhya weird. But, it was interesting to get a perspective from all the different sides in the Kashmiri conflict. Highly recommended.   

10.   Strangers in their own Land-Arlie Russel Hochschild(Non Fiction)- After the US elections of 2016, I wanted to understand the forces that could propel a person like Trump to power. This book tries to scale the ‘empathy wall’ between the coastal liberals and Conservative middle America from the Liberal side. The author spent some time in Louisiana, one of the poorest states in America to understand why the majority were voting Republican against their own interests. The people the author encounters and their perspectives are deeply fascinating. The book tries to understand why Conservatives hold the beliefs they do and why they vote the way they do and largely succeeds. Highly Recommended

 Here is a complete list of books read in 2017

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2017/1824879?utm_source=twitter

Raja vs Rahman- The Mani Ratnam Round

We’ve all had arguments over the years on who is greater- Sachin or Dravid(Sachin), Rajnikanth or Kamal Hassan(Kamal), SPB or Yesudas(Yesudas) and Modi or Nehru (Kidding!). But, some of the bitterest arguments I have had were around Ilayaraaja and AR Rahman. I have been on both sides of the argument. There is a timelessness and ease in Raja’s brilliance which can never be matched. However, at times, Raja comes off as less polished in delivery as Rahman. While no one really sounds as good as Rahman, he does on the other hand have this tendency to be overwhelming. There is a surfeit of things happening that our senses failing to perceive the complexity collapses the soundscape. This is why I believe that you have to listen a few times to any new Rahman song before we can truly appreciate it. I have come to realize that each one is great in his own way. We are blessed to have had such stalwarts producing fabulous music in the last forty years. A decade separating them, AR Rahman is as much of leap in terms of style from Raja as Raja is from a MSV. They are quite different from each other and even though they are contemporaries in a sense, Raja from Annakili was not operating in the same place as Rahman in Roja. Any comparisons would be moot- completely pointless.

But, when has that ever stopped us? If we were stopping pursuing pointless ends, we might as well start with the next breath.  That said, one needs a frame of reference if you are going to measure their disparate output. So, here is an arbitrary frame of reference that my “genius” friend Sriram came up with- Mani Ratnam movies.  Mani Ratnam has always been praised for his excellent taste music. He comes off like someone who knows what he wants and is not shy in getting what he wants from his musicians. It is also a reasonable frame of reference. There are 23 movies in total- 10 with Raja and 13 with Rahman. You can gather some fascinating insights from the details. Vairamuthu wrote just one song in Idhaya kovil(1985) and was never included in a Mani Ratnam Movie until Roja(1992). SPB hasn’t sung in a Mani Ratnam movie after Kadhal rojave! Janaki hasn’t sung in a Mani Ratnam move since Thalapathi(1991) either!

This time I have included movies made in other languages and have tried to score the music as it appeared originally except for Idhayathai Thirudathe which is a favorite. Geetanjali is good, but it loses something for me in Telugu. Only because I don’t know the language. I have also tried to show my work this time. I have rated each song individually on the spreadsheet which ultimately makes up the score for the movie. I haven’t tried to rank the songs individually because there is no way you can measure Yamunai Atrile against Yevano Oruvan Vasikkiran.  So, anyway here is what I am seeing

	Movie	Average of Score
1	Alaipayuthe	78%
2	Thalapathi	64%
3	Dil Se..	58%
4	Agni Natchathram	58%
5	Kaatru Veliyidai	58%
6	Bombay	53%
7	Idhayaththai Thirudaathe	46%
8	Kadal	46%
9	Nayakan	38%
10	Ayutha Ezhuthu	38%
11	Pallavi Anupallavi	38%
12	Roja	36%
13	O Kadhal Kanmani	31%
14	Kannathil Muthamittal	29%
15	Thiruda Thiruda	22%
16	Iruvar	22%
17	Mouna Ragam	17%
18	Guru	17%
19	Idhaya Kovil	6%
20	Anjali	0%
21	Pagal Nilavu	-4%
22	Ravanan	-4%
23	Unaru	-25%

 

There was not much to separate the top 5. Alaipayuthe scores over everything else despite September Maatham because every other song is truly great. Thalapathy loses out because of some minor compositions (marghazhithan and putham puthu poo) that no one really remembers. Dil Se loses out because of Jiya Jale. I don’t have the heart to make it a great song. Unaru loses out because it has 2 so-so songs. As we saw in the previous one, Ravanan is the worst asid Pagal Nilavu. The greatest song is probably Yamunai Atrile or Tevano Oruvan or Chaiyya Chaiyya. There are just 3 songs that I hate of the 157

1.       Mottamadi (Anjali)

2.       Rukkumani(Roja)

3.       September Matham(Alaipayuthe)

As always the spreadsheet is here

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jweurTAZ6V4C12E7t82hohvpYcLVa0KmnsrFXtFvUMA/edit?usp=sharing

 

A Pseudo-scientific, non-definitive and completely biased ranking of every one of AR Rahman's Tamil Albums

I was listening to a  Rahman station on of the new-fangled streaming services when "Netru Illatha Matram" came up and it struck me. Pudhiya Mugam was probably one of ARR's best albums.The album came out in 1993. 25 freaking years ago.  I am not sure if I this is because I am getting old, but, I also had the feeling that the albums from the 90's were better than the later years. Since I had a couple of hours on my hand I decided to put the theories to test. I needed to score and rank all of ARR's albums. At least the tamil ones.  So, here is what I did

1. I pulled a list of Tamil albums from Wikipedia. I included only Original Tamil movie sound tracks. This meant that Dil Se and Guru were out even though they were dubbed in to Tamil whereas "Manasukkul Oru Puyal"(ugh!) from Star was included even though the song was composed for Thakshak(Boondon Se Baatein). This included 68 albums from Roja to Kaatru Veliyidai
2. I then went through each album and identified songs that I absolutely loved in each album and songs that I would never  voluntarily agree to listen to ever again.  Since this is my ranking and the fact that only my opinion really matters, this was purely based on my personal likes/dislikes. I am sure there are millions of people who like Rukkumani Rukkumani from Roja. But, I detest the heck out of that song. I also think that Nee than En Desia Geetham was brilliant to which no one I know agrees with. So,there! Any song that does not fall in to the two buckets is a so-so song. I hate theme songs(If there are no words, it is not a song! Sorry. But I am ready to fight people on this), so they all made it in to this bucket. 
3. I noticed that there was  gap between 2003 and 2005 when there were not many albums I would ever listen to again voluntarily
4. The next step was to assign scores for each album. Again, I made up the rules. I wanted to compare apples to apples. So, I divided the count of great songs in an album by the number of songs in that album. This would tell me what fraction of the album was truly great. from this I subtracted the fraction of the album that I considered bad. When I realized that there were a lot of so-so albums in the 2000's I decided to penalize the so-so songs(and the theme songs). Surely, a so-so song is not as bad as a "Rukkumani" song. So, I assigned a .25 weight to the so-so fraction and it would be a negative. Since I did not want to deal with decimals, I multiplied the total by 100. So, the score for each album turned out to be  

Album Score= ((# Great songs-(0.25* #so-so songs)- #horrible songs)/(#songs in the album))* 100

So, without much ado(except for a brief drum roll), the best albums

Year	Tamil	#	Best Song	Worst Song	Yay!	So-so	Ugh	Score
1995	Indira	6	Thoda Thoda Malardhadhenna		5	1	0	79
2000	Alaipayuthey	9	Evano Oruvan	September Maadham	8	0	1	78
1993	Pudhiya Mugam	7	Netru Illadha Matram		5	2	0	64
2016	Achcham Yenbadhu Madamaiyada	5	Avalum Naanum	Showkali	4	0	1	60
2017	Kaatru Veliyidai	6	Nallai Allai		4	2	0	58

There! Puthiya Mugam is the third best. Vindicated! Indira was the best? Seriously! Which idiot came up with this list? Oh? okay, then! Duet was no 21because of the sheer size of the album-14 songs.
Next, Lets look at the worst ever albums
Year   Movie                        #      Best Song                Worst song         Great!   So-So Ugh! Score
1996   Kadhal Desam          6      Mustafa Mustafa      Hello Doctor            1          2            3   -42
1994   Karuththamma          7     Kaadu Potta Kaadu   Thenmerku              0          5            2   -46
1999   Jodi                           9                                       Oru Poiyavadhu       0          4            5   -67
2002   Alli Arjuna               5                                        Sollayo Solaikilli     0          1           4    -85
1999   Kadhalar Dhinam     7 Enna Vilaiyazhagae       Kadhalenum            0          1            6   -89

 I was surprised that Kathal Desam was in the bottom 5. Alli Arjuna and Kadhalar Dhinam are the worst! I love some of the Alli Arjuna songs in their Hindi avatars, but the lyrics in Tamil are truly Ugh!(I mean.... Sollaya Solai kili, really?) There is no such redemption for Kadhalar Dhinam. It doesn't help the fact that most of the songs were pictured on Kunal(RIP).

Here is another amazing insight. Are you ready? Here are the scores by decade

Decade        # Movies     Total Score  Average Score
1990's           32               119              3.72
2000's           23              -192             -8.35
2010's           13               198              15.23

Who would have thunk it? on an average the albums that came out 2010 and later are better! The worst albums in the decade were Kochadiayaan, Lingaa and 24 which were not bad. The problem was that the albums were not memorable either. On the other hand the 2000s started strong with Alaipayuthe, Kandukondein, Rhythm and Tenali and ended with a whimper with ATM and Sakkarakatti

Here is the entire spreadsheet .

Bhima Lone Warrior by M.T. Vasudevan Nair, Gita Krishnankutty (Translator)

I first heard about this book on the news. It was going to be made in to the most expensive Indian movie ever! Mohanlal would be Bhima! My initial reaction was weary sigh! Mahabharata? Once again? Cant we come up with new material at all? Still curious, I looked up the book online. Surprisingly, all the reviews for the book were good. It was available in my local library as well. So, I picked it up and started reading it. I just have one word to describe the book- Brilliant! We all know the story all of the beats. But, by making Bhima the protagonist and making him introspective, insightful and human, each incident acquires a fresh meaning. The other interesting narrative choice was to to give both Kunti and Draupadi more agency than they are typically given. This means that we have different perspectives on everything from Draupadi's wedding to Karna's character arc and the Pandavas themselves. Put this on top of your to-read list whether you have encountered other versions of the epic or no. That said, given the spirit of the book and some of the liberties it takes with the story, I don't see how this movie can be made in India today. The makers would be lynched!
Link to the book

Being Mortal- Atul Gawande

I am back to hawk another one. Atul Gawande is American born surgeon of Indian origin. He has written a few books that are both critical and commercial successes. This book talks about what it means to come to the close of your lifespan wither with age or a terminal illness and how we should handle it. Ars Morendi or the art of dying is mostly lost. With all the advances in medicine over the last 50 years, we have extended the lifespan for the majority of people in the developed countries. Developing countries like India are not too far behind either. There is a tremendous amount of new treatments/ medicines that seemingly come out every day for what was previously thought of as terminal illnesses. The book deals with two unintended consequences of these advances. 1. With age, people lose the ability to take care of themselves. This is not as much a problem in India, where the children, by and large feel the duty to take care of their parents at home. However, in the more developed nations, when the elderly are unable to take care of themselves, for a variety of reasons, they are sent to nursing homes. In Nursing homes, the individual loses his/ her autonomy and sense of privacy which makes their final days lonely and miserable. The book talks about the need to move away from Nursing homes and move towards more open retirement communities where the aged can be autonomous and mingle with other men and women of their own age. They could control their time, medication and activities. There is a lot of progress towards that in recent years 2. People with terminal illnesses such as cancer are subjected to a lot of pain and suffering as part of their treatment from Chemotherapy to surgery. Some of them work and others don’t. Doctors these days have changed from individuals knowing exactly what is best for the patient to facilitators who go through various options and allow the patients to pick an option. Here is an example from the book. The author’s father had a tumor in his spine. One of the doctors gave the patient two options either perform surgery right now and risk becoming a quadriplegic or wait until the tumor grows at which point the author’s father will become invalid. Most of us are not equipped to make the decision at that stage. The book talks about needing talk about what is important for the individual. At what stage should doctors stop trying remedies which have a high cost in an individual’s life in terms of pain or other side effects with no benefit in prolonging that person’s life?

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

I am not in the habit of shilling books out here. However, I will make an exception to this one. Adapted from a Harvard course, this book talks about everything from affirmative action to patriotism and euthanasia with lucid examples and clear prose. This is not a dry textbook about philosophy or law you don't care about. It is relevant and illuminating. I guarantee that you will get through this book with a different perspective on something that you thought you believed in. Each argument presented in the book is something relatable which was on the news recently and while you may disagree...

What I have been doing

New on my iPod-

1. The Stone Roses- click here for more info
2. Spoon- click here for more info
3. Vampire Weekend-click here for more info
4. Fever Ray- click here for more info

New on the Kindle

1. The Lost Books of Odyssey- click here for more info
2. The Adamantine palace- click here for more info

Okay, I have told you elsewhere that I love Blur??? Here's why...

"So give me Coffee and TV
easily
I've seen so much
I'm going blind
And i'm braindead virtually
Sociability
It's hard enough for me
Take me away from this big bad world
And agree to marry me
So we can start all over again"
- from "Coffee and TV" by Blur

Finished The first part of the book of New Sun, as promised..... This is not as much fun as I hoped, but, I kinda expoected that. Considering that this is the third time I am finishing book 1 in the last 3 years. I left Vol 2 midway last time, so things should start getting interesting from then on....

Let's see... what else? Just came back from watching "Up in the Air". I don't understand what was political about it? It was mildly Nihilistic..... But I suppose it is a step away from the goody-goody Hollywood stereotype.....

Nothing else to say....