Being Self-Centered is Bad ?

I read this book 'Snakes in Suits' which mentioned the traits of people who are psychopaths and are not suitable for the organisation. The authors say that the psychopaths are selfish and don't have a moral conscience if somebody's loss is going to help them.

It provoked me to think what is bad in making things work for you even if it goes against you ?

The organisations which really hire people like the authors to check out the psychological state of a candidate sometimes don't have a moral conscience for themselves. I wonder how many big organisations are there in the world who are following the best moral practises and never made any mistake.

One more thing was who gave authority to these authors that they can decide about others? I don't think that education only can grant it.

When you question others morality than they may give a counter argument who are we to ask such questions and who are these guys who think that they are always right or they never fell for anything ?

But these questions can never be answered rationally, no matter who is trying to.

From our point of view all of us are right and we don't care about what others think about us.

So this is going to stay like that but the most important thing is that its good to have a sense of moral responsibility for everything we're attached with (directly or indirectly). It may not sound practical but it will definitely help us to take decisions in real life.

Love

Snakes in Suits by Paul Babiak and Robert D. Hare

This book was published long back and its a well documented record of people who are called

psychopaths (its a mean word in psychiatry). The two authors have a wide experience in working with the big corporations to profile the potential candidates for the key positions.They actually tell which candidate can be harmful for the organzation.

The book has an interesting narrative and it moves like a story along with the inputs from the authors. I must say that even a subject like psychiatry is presented in a interesting manner. It captures your attention when it identifies the traits which a possible psychopath may exhibit.

The whole book is full of live examples how the psychopaths may behave. But the authors warn the readers not to judge the people around them on the basis of criteria mentiond in the book. They say that it should be done by a proper psychiatrist and his results should be based on rationality.

One thing that I understood from this book was that not all the people who are a bit deviant in behavior are not psychopaths. In fact, psychopathic traits can be seen by everybody in some or other way but when it becomes a inherent trait of that person than it may pose a threat to the organization or the people working with that person.

The only thing I want to suggest here is that people who are going to read this book or have already read this book should avoid to be a stereotype and measuring everybody on the given criteria only and calling everybody a psychopath.

The book is fun to read but may not interest the regular readers.

But it has lot many real life examples on psychopaths.

The Immortals of Meluha by Amish Tripathi

This is the first book in the trilogy of Shiva, a Hindu god of destruction.

The plot of book is a combination of Hindu mythology and author's imagination.

This book is about the migration of Shiva from Tibetan mountains to the plain land. He lands in the city of Daksha the king of Suryavanshi. The city is prosperous and it has its own culture of law abiding citizens who live peacefully preforming their responsibilities for the proper functioning of the society.Suryavanshi worship all the Hindu gods and Ram is their god who put the base for the better society and its management.

Shiva is a great swordsman and a warrior but he has his own nightmares.

The legend says that a Savior will come to Suryavanshis who will destroy the evil, Chandravanshi, who are their enemies. Shiva falls in love with Daksha's daughter and accepts that he will lead his soldiers in war against Chandravanshis.

Shiva makes a good war plan and executes it well which results in the victory for Daksha.

After win the Shiva doesn't feel like he had won something or the reason for war was right at all.

There is one more angle of Nagas who are said to be evil and have great powers and they are believed to help the Chandravanshis in their mission against Suryavanshis.

After the war Shiva realises that their was no real reason for war and Suryavanshis are only different from Chandravanshis but not evil. This leaves a big void in his belief. He feels sorry for judging the situation as it was told rather than trying to find out the truth. It leaves Shiva in the dilemma of things being right or wrong, evil or good. And who can decide what belongs to which category.

In the last of the book the Nagas attacked Sati and Shiva in Ayodhya and the story is left from their for the next part 'The Secret of Nagas'.

The book is fast paced and kept me glued to the pages till the end of the book and ends at such a note that you are bound to read the second book. Language is simple and expressive but the author fails to express the emotions of the characters at some places specially at the scene before war when Shiva makes a speech.

Another thing is that the author used the name of a god Shiva and his story and tries hard to show that he was just a man with extraordinary human skills only. But the characterisation of Shiva is like a dude. He speaks a cool language and jokes a lot which doesn't fit to a character like that. It seems like he has tried to create a character from mythology with a flavor of current language (lingo) and Shiva sounds more like a guy-next-door rather than a Savior.

The book is a good read and makes you go for the next book in the series.

Revolution 2020 by Chetan Bhagat

Chaetan Bhagat is a famous name in Indian writers. He is famous for storytelling kind of narrative and common lingo.
I read this book and it is having all those things Chetan is famous for.
Story of three childhood friends, two boys and one girl, who grew up together and have different expectations from life.
Gopal is a guy from poor family who wants to make it big in life and is expected to be an engineer by his father. Raghav is his friend who belongs to a rich family and secures to get admission in a prestigious college. Aarti is the third main character who is also a friend of Gopal and she has some other dreams for her life.
Gopal is a failure in life because he couldn't become what his father wanted him to be and he himself considered it to be a good option but he never really believed that he can make it. His whole character is destined to be full of doubts and lack of self-respect. He always tried to be proven great but he looked at others to approve this. He wants people to be satisfied and in the whole story he is always confused with right and wrong. He is a one sided lover of Aarti but he never believed that he was the right person in the end.
Raghav is a simple character and quite clear about what he wants to be. He left a successful career to fulfill his ambitions. He wants to change the system and this is his only dream. He is very revolutionary in nature and has different thoughts on the revolution will happen. He is the boy friend of Aarti which comes to a happy ending for him after many twists and turns.
Aarti is the third main character in the book she is the love interest of Gopal. She wants to be an air hostess. She loves Raghav but she cares for Gopal. In fact in the whole book she is defined as the most confused girl in the world. She is not sure whether she loves Raghav or Gopal till the end of the story and end sounds more like that she has accepted the things as they are rather than making a choice and fight for it.
Some previous novels from Chetan was adapted to a movie and this started happening that his subsequent novels look more like a screenplay of a movie rather than having a novel like structure. Same thing happened to this novel as well and at many instances it looks like a topsy turvy bollywood movie. And I must say that the he was competing with Sidney at the scenes of intimate scenes between Gopal and Aarti. That was also a low point because it was more like adding spice rather than sensuality.

I am not a fan of Chetan and I think he is a writer by profession rather by choice. He is a famous speaker as well (with a price tag, of course) and he speaks about motivation and other practical things in life.
I'll add one more thing here that all the books by Chetan are said to be best seller (not quite sure about it) but the most important person is a reader and everyone of us has a different taste in books and we as a reader are free to read whatever we like but most important thing is to keep reading because that is the way we can know what we like.
Read it if you like his writings because it has everything what he is famous for but if you didn't read it you are not missing anything

Go Kiss the World by Subroto Bagchi

This one is an autobiography by Subroto Bagchi, an entrepreneur and co-founder of MindTree, an International IT consultancy.

This book is a blend of personal experiences and instructions from Subroto.
Its a small book (about 230 pages) and I couldn't put it down once I started reading it. 

The narrative basically goes around the personal life experience of the author but it never looks like a preaching. It is more like 'I-have-to-say-something-you-can-learn' and if you are not interested you can better put it down.

The author takes the instances from different parts of his life like a child, a grown man, an insecure entrepreneur etc and in the end leaves with a feeling that there are some other things in life more than just earning the money and the best part of life is making choices.

He quoted Buffet as more than $10,000 is enough for the maximum satisfaction that money can bring.

My favourite is 'We're free to make the choices but we should be ready to take those consequences that follow.

The narrative and the language is quiet simple and it is also a good point about the book.

I'm not writing in detail about everything given in the book because I think that this is something which people should read and understand on their own which is quite typical to all the autobiographies.

Stripping The Gurus by Geoffrey D Falk

This book took a lot of time for me to read because I was juggling among 2-3 books at a time and I don't regret the time I invested in finishing the book. In fact, I'm happy that I finished it well in time.

So this book is about breaking the jinx of gurus, the philosophical or religious deity who influence our view as how we think about the world and what is life.This can be put as the guru is a person who makes you see or think what is right or at least what is right from his point or thinking.

This book mentions (or I should say explore ) the life, death, habits etc of the gurus who were famous in US at some point of time.

But the biggest loophole in the whole book was that rather than being serious book on the guru cult it became more like a written revenge against all the people who ever claimed to have a higher conscious or different way of life which they wanted to teach others. This way of life was either taken directly from the religion these gurus followed or it was something which they realized by different means or senses.

I'll like to add that the book is well searched material with the appropriate references from the reliable sources but overall it became more like a kiss and tell story.

The writer was himself under the tutelage of such guru for 9 months and after that he realized that he has been cheated or this is not something what he was looking for. He is quite an educated person but he tries to rationalize his innocence by saying that he was not quite aware of the hidden face of these so called gurus. It took him 9 months to understand that he was following something which was not what it seems to be.

Another thing which I didn't understand was why most of the gurus he talked about in his book were of Asian or Oriental origin ? He has quoted some other gurus as well but they were shown under the tutelage of another guru who belonged to the origins earlier mentioned.

He has given enough notes and proofs against these gurus by the disciples or the other people who were connected to them in some way or the other.

I don't have any intention of glorifying these gurus but one thing that can cross to any rational mind is that what was the reason of these gurus becoming so famous over the nights.

Author doesn't through light on this topic which makes his intention of writing this book more dubious.

In the last chapter he says that everybody has his/her own way with spirituality. But what is the point in being rational and spiritual if you're looking for the reason why something happened rather than accepting it to happen. I am not saying that we should accept anything miraculous and reason has no space in this world. All I'm saying is that everything has its own limits and reason is no exception to it. There are few things which go beyond reason and you just have to believe them.

My last point against this book is that if the author really wanted to rationalize the things (as he mentioned in introduction as well as in the last chapter) he should have talked more about his own religion as well which could have balanced the whole narrative of the book.

I completely agree with being rational to every choice in our life (why only guru ?) but as I mentioned earlier that even reason has a limit and there is something wrong with analyzing everything in the light of rationale. There is a term in Management "Analysis-Paralysis" which means that too much rationalizing the things may lead to a wrong direction altogether.

We should respect all the people and how they have tried to live their lives in a noble way. If we want to prove something wrong totally than we can or at least we can form some prejudice against that thing but this is not the right conduct. Ideally we should be like taking everything which is right and leave everything which is wrong.

Have an open mind and read this book, worth reading with lots of information (remember the open mind).

Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa

I read this novel some 3 weeks back but didn't write it on my blog because I was not sure where my thoughts are going. So finally here it is what I thought of this one.

This is a novel by Bapsi Sidhwa a famous Pakistani/American writer who writes in English.

This is a story of partition era when nothing was going well in India or Pakistan for that matter and the best part is that the story is told by a kid named Lenny who belongs to a Parsee family.

Lenny is seeing the things changing all around her and she is quite receptive to all these changes. There are other characters as well who belong to her family and others who happen to be there in her life as Ayah, Gardener, cook, neighbors, godmother and cousin etc.

The other character which I felt as a main one was Ayah. She is a Hindu and during all the chaos of partition she was kidnapped and raped by the mob.

Lenny thought she was gone but after sometime it turns out that her secret admirer kept her and make her sing as a sing-song girl. Godmother found it out and made arrangements for her to be sent to India to her relatives.

Her lover (one sided, of course) goes mad after she left.

I liked the narrative and there was not much pace (which was not required either) but I thought the whole story to be a bit biased. The book talks about the brutality of that time in a very mild manner, I don't want anybody to be condemned but the writer could have been more expletive to the situation in a rational manner rather than giving more space to the secret love and relation between Lenny and her cousin.

Bapsi Sidhwa is a Parsee and defines herself as Punjabi-Parsi-Pakistani.

The movie "Earth" by Deepa Mehta is based on this novel.

Movie is worth watching and you can read the novel too if you've some time to spare, but not a great read, there are much better accounts on Partition of India.

LONELINESS

From last few days I was thinking of writing something about this thing LONELINESS.

I am not quite sure how to start it but I'll like to say that everybody feels it once or more than that in their lives.
But what is the most important thing about being alone?
The problem is that every single person can have their own perception of this thing. For some of us its a positive thing and for others its a negative thing.
But my view is that loneliness is a very important thing. Loneliness is the opportunity to know what you are, to know what you think or what you can/want to be.
Loneliness is a blessing for the strong and curse for the weak.
People who are weak can't stay alone. I am not saying that everybody who can't stay alone is weak but there are some points when  we can't pinpoint the reason for such things.
The most important point which I can add here is that the people who are put into jail because it started with the same thought that loneliness is itself a punishment for the weak and all the criminals are weak.
May be my reason may have some flaws but my view is quite strong. Not everybody is strong enough to face this loneliness. Only the people who have a pure heart and strong will can face this situation.
The worst thing about being alone is that the affect of being alone can't be seen instantly, these things show their affect by the time and most important thing is that these changes don't come visible but their affect stays for a long time and the unavoidable thing is that you can't change it in any case.
All I want to say is that try not to be alone, be with someone your family, friends or even a well wisher is good to be with.
Loneliness is a poison and you never know where its going to hit you.

Love 

From the Street Dogs

I don't know how many of us have really observed the life of a street dog. In fact it might have never crossed anybody's mind that there is anything worth noticing in a dog's life, that also a dog from the street.

But just a few days back I observed a strange things in street dogs. They always follow or run after anything moving fast like a car, bike or any other vehicle preferably a brilliant colour. A group of dogs will follow these vehicles specially in the nights. Some of us might have noticed this thing but did we ever gave it a thought to what happens after they get the vehicle. I saw that they will start following a new one after another, that's it.They don't know what to do with it once they get it.

It reminded me of human being having the same habit or nature. All of them are running after fast moving and bright things, but once they get it they don't know what to do with it and there starts a new race for another one which they don't have or which they think as better.

This is quite an irony most of them live with. You can name it materialism or whatever you want but in the end it is all going to be of no use. In the long run we realise that getting more leads to get much more and its such a spiral track that we loose sight of what we've and run after which is ahead of us. All these things don't bring a kind of satisfaction in life,instead it makes us more thirsty. Life becomes a race to get the things and running more and more.

People don't realise what they are loosing and that they are missing to enjoy the fruits of their efforts just because of running after another one.

I don't know what to say to all these people who are blindly following anything that comes into that way, but I'll like to add this point for sure that life is much more than achievements and competition and anything that makes us to compare ourselves with others. We should be a more of us than being a winner of a worthless race, because in the end it doesn't count what you earned what counts is what you enjoyed.

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them."
This is another novel by a famous Russian novelist and writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Theme of the novel revolves around a Prince Myshkin who has returned from a sanatorium after few years.
The prince arrives at a relatives home in Russia and falls in love with the daughter of his relative Aglaya.
Prince was suffering from epilepsy. He has not much confidence in himself.
There is one more character in the story who is Anatasya Filipovna, ex-mistress of an aristocrat. She is supposed to be a bad woman for the society.
Prince falls in love with her also and tries to woo her by his recently inherited property from a distant relative. But Anastasya sees the simplicity in Myshkin and even if she wants to marry him but says otherwise and chooses another guy Rogozhin. She leaves the place with Rogozhin but she never forgets the prince.
On the other hand Agalya also gets attracted towards Myshkin for his simplicity but never accepts it openly. She says that Myshkin is a retard but had hidden feelings for him.
Myshkin follows Anastasya and Rogozhin for the next few months. Anastasya also meets secretly with Myshkin secretly but she never decides to stay with Myshkin.
Prince come backs to his relative and stays with Aglaya's and her family for some time along. During this time he gets fit and people think that he is not a proper match for Aglaya. But Aglaya follows her and takes care of her.
during this period Agalya and Anastasya communicate with each other and Anastasya tries to convince Aglaya to marry with Myshkin as she is a good match for him.
At one meeting all three again get stuck in a situation and both the women ask him to choose between his real love for Aglaya and the pity-love for Anastasya. Myshkin was unable to take a decision which makes Agalya feel bad and she moves away and Anastasya promises to marry Myshkin.
But again at the last moment she finds it difficult to marry Myshkin as she loves him so much and thinks that being with her will destroy him and runs away with Rogozhin.
Myshkin follows them again to find out next day that Rogozhin has stabbed Anastasya and she is dead now.
Myshkin tries to console Rogozhin for the death of Anastasya but he  gets broken himself.
 Rogozhin goes to jail and Myshkin back to sanatorium.
Aglaya marries to a guy against her wish to marry at all.
The most important point in this whole novel was a different definition of love.
Aglaya and Anastasya both love Myshkin and so he feels for both of them. But the biggest difference is that Aglaya loves but can't accept, Anastasya loves accepts but can't take it to a further level as she fears it will destroy Myshkin. Finally, the most complicated Myshkin who loves Aglaya for her being what she is and loves Anastasya for her being considered as a 'fallen' one. His love for Anastasya is a kind of pity or I'll better like to say a kind of kinship which he feels for himself too. This love is beyond the known forms of love because both of them (Myshkin and Anastasya) wants to sacrifice their love for the betterment of each other.
The first sentence that I quoted in the beginning can be taken as the theme of the whole plot. Or I will like to put it in simple words as we are far more complex than anybody can explain.
This indecisiveness stays with most of us for the lifetime as we always be dual minded for any decision. We are never sure whether we want to be logical, rational or just lead by heart. And this is the beauty of the nature that we still come out with the best ones.
Finally, love lives in sacrifice and over the time we realise that it was good for most of us involved in such situations. I'm not saying that every story should have a sad ending but in the end we can definitely see in most of the cases people are much better apart than being together.
I'll like to say that Anastasya and Myshkin being apart was good for both of them but it was not true in case of Aglaya. But reason has its limits and it is the love that makes us human whether we are successful or not.


Love

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way


Above is the opening line of the novel. I think of it the second best novel by Tolstoy after War and Peace.
I read this novel long back, in fact I remember it as the first novel I read but I still remember the theme and plot of the whole novel like I'm still reading it. Characters are so lively that I can relate everyone of them to somebody or the other around me even if I'm not living in the same society which Tolstoy paints in this novel.
The story revolves around three main characters Anna, her husband Alexei Karenin and her lover Alexei Vronsky. 
As the name suggests Anna is the central figure in the novel around whom the whole story is woven nicely.
Tolstoy has created all the characters in such a way that all of them looks realistic with all their desires, destiny, attitude, passion and all other human behaviour.
The novel starts with a scene of a woman dieing on the railway station which nobody knows for sure as an accident or suicide and ends with Anna committing suicide on railway track.
The whole plot sounds depressing but anybody reading the novel can find that it was not meant to be so but the writer was only trying to create the characters as real s possible and he succeeded very well.
While reading the novel you can understand the single rational behind the actions or thought process of the main characters. Even Anna taking the final step was quite obvious from her mental state depicted there and you don't need to be a psychologist to understand that.
The character I liked most is Anna only. She is such an embodiment of human nature full of desires and dreams that I never thought her infidelity as something immoral in nature. She is more like any other person who dreams and lusts(desires) for whatever they want irrespective of its moral aspects. She even doesn't like the behavior of her husband who kind of tries to show her mercy and asks her to forget the past and start things afresh. Anna can't stand such mercy and she thinks that whatever he is doing is just for the sake of saving his face in the society which sounds like a hypocrisy in itself to her. She looks like a rebellion against the society by saying no to any such offers.
I never like the idea of suicide because I'm quite sure that life never ends at a point when you can't do anything, there is always a door to exit to somewhere else but it can never be suicide. It's better to stand with something you believe in and follow it to see it happen. People say that people who commit suicide has nothing to live for but I think that they don't give a chance to something that they can live for. The only thing that can be counted as a possibility for somebody committing such a thing can loneliness, we can be so alone sometimes that we don't see anything coming towards us and life looks like a blackhole but this is the time when we've to be very much aware of ourselves and what we want from life and there should always be some reason to live for. We can't be dead for one reason when life gives us so many reasons to live for.
Anna Karenina, one of the best novels ever written, read it for yourself and don't get discouraged by the size of the book. You will never regret investing time in it.
Love

The First Post

Hey Netigens,


This is my first blog ever.


I think that the name I've chosen for my blog may not be quite telling what I'm going to post here but this is exactly the reason I didn't give a specified name. I just wanted to keep it away from being a stereotype.


Lets see how much its going to be.


I'll keep posting here.


Love