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.