Few more books

Got a chance to read some books because of the surgery:

The Great Indian novel: Modern Indian history weds Ancient Indian history aka Mahabharat. I didn’t know a lot about Mahabharat before I started reading the book (never even seen the TV show). But Shashi Tharoor takes good care of the readers like me by spending the first quarter of the book by not bringing in limelight the analogies of his characters to the modern Indian history, which is most of the 20th century. One does need to be fairly familiar with the other set of characters like Gandhi and senior Congress leaders throughout the century, Subhash Chandra Bose and others of the likes of V.V.Giri who may not have been a lot talked about but were pivotal in post-independence India. So, there are three sets: characters in the novel, characters from Mahabharat and political characters from 20th century India. Except a few outliers, all the characters of the novel have a counterpart character in Mahabharat and one in 20th century. When I say characters, I use the term a little broadly for the last set. The author went one step ahead and has even compared his characters to national elements like democracy (Draupadi), media (Arjun), army (Bheem) etc. One might claim that the book doesn’t cover history of the nation continuously and completely. For example, one of the obvious freedom fighter I found missing was Bhagat Singh. But, one has to realize that the book is not exactly a narration of Indian history using Mahabharat’s characters, although at one point even I was convinced it is. The book is simply a story of its own embedded in the two dimensions of an epic and a nation’s history for the readers to appreciate it at multiple levels.

K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain: This is a compilation of 7 expeditions to the world’s second highest mountain from 1930s to 2008. I have read the book “Into thin air” about the 1996 Mt. Everest tragedy but this book was more interesting. Although there are multiple K2 tragedies described in the book, it is more interesting because the author presents things from a mountaineer’s viewpoint which was missing with Jon Krauker (author of “Into thin air”) to some extent. While the expeditions described are only ones to K2, the author talks also about the history of mountaineering in general. Having climbed all the 14 8000-ers, he often relates to his experiences to the other great mountains. There are mountaineers portrayed as heroes in the book and also some as villains. I was actually a little shocked to hear about the dark side of the 1954’s first successful expedition. One more thing I liked about the book was arguments about the dilemma that a mountaineer faces sometimes. For example, what should a mountaineer do when he is faced with a situation with a dying person on his way to the top? Should he go pursue his dream of conquering the peak or try saving the dying person by carrying him down? The author also talks about coordination and how the lack of it can screw up the whole quest. I found some feats like that of a guy saving 6 others using an ice axe during the 1953 expedition and the solo non-stop climb of a guy to the top of K2 in around 20 hours too awesome. I was so full of energy after reading the book that I searched for movies about mountaineering and saw three of them. The best among the lot was a movie called “K2”, released somewhere around 1992.

The logic of life and Freakonomics: Putting these two together because of two reasons. First, there’s not much to write about them, both are nice reads and deal with plenty real-life examples. Second, they have a related theme: rationality. While “the logic of life” claims that that all human behavior, individual or social, is a result of rational thinking, “Freakonomics” tries to unravel some interesting cause-effect relationships even at macro level like crime rate in US etc.

On the road: Not purely a piece of fiction, it describes the journey of a young man through the entire country, along with many of his friends, particularly Dean Moriarty, who is a person with infinite energy and a will to experience things raw. The book is not about a single journey but many road adventures that the narrator and his friends had during a period of 5-6 years. There are elements like their zest for exploring new worlds, struggle with money that reminded me of the journey of Che Guevera in “The Motorcycle Diaries”. I was almost about to leave the book after having read the first 50 pages or so, but quite happy that I didn’t.