Stuka! Congratulations on marriage!

what am I reading?
I think for the last 2 years I have been into Self-Help books. I usually go to the Self Help section of Barnes & Nobles and I like to read books on how you can influence your mind to think positive thoughts... I read Dr. Susan Jeffer’s, ’’Feel the fear and Do it Anyway.’’ One of the things She said that behind every negative emotion, behind all fears is the simple notion that ’’I will not be able to handle what is coming.’’ So she says that when ever there is a problem that you are scared of say, ’’I’ll handle it.’’ So that was nice.

Then I got Magical Mind Magical Body by Deepak Chopra. The way he explains science is very inspiring and not at all discouraging. My experience with science and math teachers has been that they hate me. And I hate them. So this is why I stayed away from science. As a kid I could never understand why we were not falling of the world if it was round. None of my friends could explain it to me. Then one day I saw ants crawling on a soccer ball and I figured it out that this world was a gigantic soccer ball and we were like those ants crawling on it. And thats how I understood gravity. I guess I was young and needed to see something like that to understand gravity. 26 i think. but I feel really angry with some of my childhood teachers for not taking the time to explain things to me. Specialy fractions. I hated fractions and my dad, to explain me math, would bring this old text book that his grandfather had used to pass matriculation durring the great rebellion of 1857... and now I look at these lucky bastard children who have the internet and all kinds of games to learn math with. I want to slap those kids because they really have it good. but I wont because I believe in healing and niceness and breaking patterns of negativity.

one of the amazing things I learned from Dr. Deepak Chopra’s lectures was that every day we think 60 Thousand thoughts. But here’s whats really scary. They are the same 60 thousand thoughts that we thought yesterday. Hence by falling into a pattern we recreate the same world day after day. So we get 60 thousand chances every day to do something better or differently and we fuck up 60 thousand times!! Another interesting thing he revealed was that in the West the time at which most people die of a heart attack is at 9:00 AM on Monday morning! Work related stress is literally killing people in our modern society.

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Triumph of the Sun - Wilbur Smith
Fantastic - the life of Arnold Schwarzenegger
The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie

darnnn, I am so confused )

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I have just read Story Of Night. It is a good novel, worth reading.Now Iam reading some Sindhi books.

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Yeah, I did look up the trailer. Looks good.

Yup, got married and moved west. U must come up and visit.

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Last book i read was Shantaram... pretty good... it is very filmy in places but is an engrossing read.
Currently reading Ancestor’s Tale by Dawkins... like any regular Dawkins book. Very well written.

Stuka
I bought blue mangoes on a trip to India... couldn’t go beyond a few pages.. i guess the book was overhyped purely b’cos of Davidar’s status in indian publishing world.

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thoroughly enjoyed the shadow lines by amitav ghosh.. have u red it? will look up the hungry tide

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Actually The House of Blue Mangoes was a big disappointment. I don’t deny that it is extremely well researched but overall the book lacks that ’soul’ factor. The one that makes you want to re-read it again.
No I havn’t read ’In the Moon of Red Ponies’ .
I have started reading ’’The World of Chickens’’ by Nick Earls who is aapro Brisbane ka chooro. OK so far.
Of what I read this year I’d really recommend ’’The Hungry Tide’’ by Amitav Ghosh.

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p.s: look up mira nair’s trailer of the namesake ka movie on youtube... it looks good

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stukay!
you got married.. yayyyy bohat mubarak... will mail you soon


the namesake was definitely better than interpreter of maladies... but it scared me shitless- will our kids be like that? so utterly butterly lost? also loved how she went about gogal and max’s affair... it was so well written.. i red the book on a flight to the u.s from a trip back home and parts of the book made me really sad.. immigration is like a chote that hurts long after its been had

will look up blue mangoes

khamkhwa,
is this the river of fire? havent red it but’ll look out for it.. howre things? (chowk ko kya ho gaya hai?)

subroto,
have you red ’In the Moon of Red Ponies’ by burke? i have it on my list and was wondering if its any good

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i am re-reading ’’aag ka darya’’ by qurrat-ul-ain-hyder, it encompasses one thousand years in the life time of a family strating from middle east, travelling to indian sub-continent and finally dispersing in the west...what a classic...what a book...an entire civiliztion...vaise tum ho kahan...do se teen huay? kabhi waqt milay to hamen salam ker liya karo...khamkhwa@hotmail.com

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i am re-reading ’’aag ka darya’’ by qurrat-ul-ain-hyder, it encompasses one thousand years in the life time of a family strating from middle east, travelling to indian sub-continent and finally dispersing in the west...what a classic...what a book...an entire civiliztion...vaise tum ho kahan...do se teen huay? kabhi waqt milay to hamen salam ker liya karo...khamkhwa@hotmail.com

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In 1899, in the south Indian village of Chevathar, Solomon Dorai is contemplating the imminent destruction of his world and everything he holds dear. As the thalaivar, or headman, of Chevathar, he seeks to preserve the village from both catastrophe and change, and the decisions he makes will mark his family for generations to come.

A gripping family chronicle, The House of Blue Mangoes spans nearly half a century and three generations of the Dorai family as they search for their place in a rapidly changing society. The novel brings vividly to life a small corner of India, while offering a stark indictment of colonialism and reflecting with great poignancy on the inexorable social transformations of the subcontinent.

The best part about this book is that is is based in South India, a region I know very little about, but one that has an amazing literary tradition.

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Short Story Winners of the O’Henry award
Before that I was reading ’’Circles : Fifty Round Trips Through History Technology Science Culture’’ by James Burke. Fifty interesting stories from the history of technology. Each one follows a chain of consequential events that ends precisely where it began.

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