The era of fear!

Why are we so afraid of everything? So many fears, so many insecurities! With so much of technology at our disposal, if we are so worried, how were our ancestors living? If we take a comparison, they should have been positively terrified!!

We have a mobile phone for every member of the family, and yet we are so worried about them - 5 minutes don't go by without us getting a phone if we are delayed somewhere! We were having dinner at a truckstop Dhaba a few days ago, and every single truck driver - there were a dozen or so - was on his mobile phone. Whether they were chatting with their families or with their agents, they were constantly chattering, and that made me wonder - what were they doing a few years ago when there were no mobile phones? They go out for months at a time, and there was hardly any contact with their family! Today, we abhor silence. We have forgotten living with ourselves - thanks to the fear epidemic!

We have security guards posted at apartments and we live in gated communities, yet we don't send the kids out for a little while to play. Are we afraid of the unknown because it is in the dark or are we afraid of it because we doubt our ability handle it? We are way more empowered than the people who lived on earth before us, and yet we are no where close to their level of relaxedness. The more we have, the lesser we sleep. There has to be something wrong there, right?

We are afraid of infections, insects, animals, atheists, technology, travelling, death, disasters, fire, freaks, and this list can go on and on. We are afraid of people in the family, of neighbours, of strangers, and of god! Where will this end? As children we are told (and quite seriously) that the darkness is our enemy and that the bogeyman will take us away if we don't do everything that is told to us. As we grow, we develop our own fortresses to keep the bogeyman out, and finally we realize that there are no exceptions! With age, we even fear our own body's inability to compete, and finally we die afraid.
Is this part of evolution too? We know that the Western world is quite afraid. They earlier turned to the East for solace. Today, China and India are more worried than the rest of the world put together! If Africa steals our livelihood, we've had it! Woolly Mammoths became wild elephants, and from there, they've turned docile enough to pick a rupee from the hands of a kid and give him a smack on the head in the form of a blessing. It is terrified of a little stick in the hands of the mahout, and is tied with a tiny piece of rope. We've gone beyond that elephant. We tie ourselves up and put the blame on the rest of the world. Everyone else is responsible for our insecurities, and everything is a Phantom.
We go out and embrace new technology, and we are more afraid for it. It is like the proverbial shoes being left outside a temple. Every possession increases our fear level, while actually they are meant to keep us safer. Ever new child entering the family, along with joy, brings in unknown fears. When we watch Discovery TV, we see that animals can sniff out fear. Actually, humans can sniff fear too. But tragically, we grow off them. We consume others' fear with glee. Strangely, that fear doesn't make us braver. The one who thrives the most on other people's insecurities is the one most afraid!
And this fear comes out in the form of Anger. No wonder everyone we look at on the street (and at home) is angry most of the time on most things. It is a fact that we are becoming more brittle and weak as generations pass. Is this nature's way of keeping us safe?

The Fifth Witness - My Review

This is probably the third or fourth novel of Michael Connelly that i'm reading, and this guy is truly a master of the courtroom drama. I actually started reading Connelly because I had run out of Grisham books, and the real master isn't writing that aggressively any longer. If you head over to Michael Connelly's website, you will see that he has been a real disciplined writer - since 1992, the author has churned out 25 books - which is more than a steady book a year - consistently! Not all of his books are legal thrillers, but i've still not gone beyond that genre from Connelly.

The Fifth Witness is a complicated courtroom story which has enough twists and turns to keep the reader riveted. I read this on my iPad, and it came to about 1350 pages in ePub format - so quite a lengthy book; and you'd better not start reading on a weekday evening if you have to go to work fresh the next morning.

Though we call the genre 'fiction', it never entirely is. Every single trend we see in fiction stems from happenings in the real world, and that is true in the case of legal thrillers also. Long gone are the days of Atticus Finch and How to Kill a Mockingbird, where there was a clear delineation of good and bad, and guilt was a prevalent undercurrent throughout the story. The early days of Grisham had that tinge too. However, with the advent of full time investigators, ambulance chasing defence lawyers, and politically motivated prosecutors as a mainstream part, the whole legal world has moved into shades of grey. What we have is light grey and dark grey; no more white and black.

The Fifth Witness, and its protagonist Michael Haller (the same guy from the bestseller The Lincoln Lawyer) operate entirely in that grey area, but with a solid surprise at the end. And when I say 'Solid', it really is! Makes us feel a bit sorry for the lawyer after all he does, and we appreciate his final decision too. Hopefully, Connelly will write a novel or two more with Haller in his new avatar.

Connelly has a tremendous grasp of the situations in real-world America, and weaves them beautifully into the story. Owing to a lack of business stemming from a market that's down, Haller moves onto foreclosure cases, which are a dime a dozen, etching out a decent living. As expected, one such case turns into a murder mystery, and that is what forms the crux of the novel. I'm not giving out more of the story, and I seriously recommend that you don't look up the story from elsewhere. It is worth reading.

Unlike the Lincoln Lawyer, there is no single theme running us through the story. There are a lot of factors at play here - foreclosures, politics, family complications, organized crime, and of course, a cracking time in the courtroom of Judge Perry. In fact, most of the story is set inside the courtroom, and that is great! 

I've become a fan of Connelly, and look forward to lapping up his other 20 novels I haven't read :)

The Murder of King Tut - My Review

James Patterson is seldom associated with anything other than thrillers, and rip roaring fiction, which keeps us awake late into the night, bleary eyed. So when a book titled The Murder of King Tut bears his name, it is bound to be mistook for another word play on a fictitious thriller.

But surprise! This one is for real, and is really the murder story of King Tutankhamen, who lived and ruled Egypt about 3300 years ago!

Firstly, the idea itself is quite fantastic. If a mainstream Archaeologist or History buff wrote this story, it would have been relegated to the  libraries. For James Patterson to put aside the next Alex Cross manuscript and dive into history is fabulous by itself. And you really don't know whether the book is Fiction or real History, or a Biography - Patterson mixes all his writing styles on this one. 

The book starts with a personal introduction by James Patterson, and several times in the course of the book, he brings the narrative back to first person, from his personal point of view. We see him talk about his publisher, his co-author on the book - Martin Dugard, and about the pending manuscripts on his writing desk. We also get a rare peek into the workday of this prolific word-smith.

The Murder of King Tut, is not really a fictitious story. The author would have taken a few liberties while putting together his own version of history - especially as the whole story has been picked up from staid objects like fragments of pottery and carvings on broken tomb walls, but in general, it is a well-researched report on a case that has gone cold thousands of years ago! While historians largely believe that King Tut died due to an injury suffered on a cart accident, there is a group of them who believe the child-Pharaoh was murdered, and Patterson starts there. The amount of research the authors did for the book is spectacular, and Patterson himself says so in the prologue. 

The Murder of King Tut is also the story of well-known Egyptologist Howard Carter, whose team actually found the tomb while digging through the Valley of the Kings. His story is woven with King Tut's, interspersed by Patterson's present time musings, and in all, make for great reading!

If you have any interest at all in History, you will lap up the story, as it takes us right into the twists and turns of an ancient epic. Even if you don't enjoy Egyptology (in spite of all the masala involved in their lives!), The Murder of King Tut remains a first class murder mystery - albeit with a spin. Seldom do we get a mainstream writer like James Patterson writing a story simultaneously in three times - 1500-1300 BC, the late 19th Century, and present day - all in one book!

Read it :) Not something that will keep you awake all night, but will help you appreciate the writer better. I do now.

The changing face of online Real Estate

The internet has changed the way we live. For any kind of business transaction, the first place we turn to today is online.

Real Estate is one of the fastest changing fields of business, and online, the field is undergoing radical changes. Earlier, we had to go down to a nearby realtor or two, and spend a few weeks hunting for properties. But with the internet, most of the preliminary work has gone online. We now can search through thousands of properties from the comfort of our home, check out a few we like, bookmark them, show them to the family, and then finally go for a site visit to a couple of them.

Top online sites like Realtor Vancouver have dozens of prime properties flowing through their website each month, and they help us save hundreds of hours in preliminary research. We can filter properties based on various criteria, and then find out more information about the properties we find best suited to our needs.

And the prices are lower online too - as is obvious. Costs of listing a property with a leading online realtor are much lower than with an offline one, and the responses are much quicker. 

If you're looking for a property in Vancouver, head over to a site like kevinfrank.ca - Kevin is among the most respected realtors in Canada, and he consistently gets his hands on the best properties on offer in the region. Check the site out - you will save loads of time and money in the bargain, and could move into your dream home in a few days from now!

No such thing as Capitalism!

Robin Hood would be glad! And there is nothing wrong with it either. This post is just a spout of a whale, with lots of air inside.

There aren't so many types of the economy as we have been led to believe. No, we are not in a Capitalistic economy, and no, Communism isn't dead. And even a kid knows that there is nothing called Socialism anyway - never has been, never will be. Just a creation of our grey-area lovers who are paid to create something for the world to fight about.

Coming back to the topic, it has always been a mix of what we today call Capitalistic endeavours, and Communistic ideas. The world has always been taking from the haves and giving it to the have-nots. In doubt? Who pays the taxes? Yes, our business people find loopholes to avoid paying their due, but they do pay some part of it. And VAT, Luxury Tax, Sales Tax, Customs, Excise, and Entertainment Tax can't be avoided anyway! And whether it is Jayalalitha giving out Televisions and Refrigerators, or Nitish Kumar (and more recently Mayawati) pleasing a massive vote bank by distributing lakhs of bicycles to school-going girls, who is bearing that cost? Obviously the government's coffers need to be filled through some legal means - a.k.a. tax. This has been in place since time immemorial, and like I mentioned earlier, there is nothing wrong with it. Just a way to keep the equality in the society going. Else, which guy from Juhu Beach will gift a million televisions so the masses in Dharavi can watch soaps in the afternoon? 

When Robin Hood did the same thing back then, he was banished to the forests of Sherwood, and though he still remains a hero to many, was called an Outlaw. When communists did this (albeit with a little more gusto than needed), they were shunned, and even shot! When the Church did the same, they were called names, and when America does that to fight wars in Afghanistan, they are saving the world!! Wow, talk about hypocrisy :)

Free health, Free education, Free ration, and yes, free electronic gadgets (including laptops now!) are being funded by the people who pay their taxes. That is the truth, and will remain so for eternity. And there really is no widening of the gulf between the rich and the poor - as more and more people get rich, the inflow into the government increases, and naturally the lifestyle of the so-called poor changes - it is all an equation, that's all. No concept of rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Of course, with Montek's now-infamous 32/- a day concept, there are anyway no 'poor' people left in India. We've eradicated poverty with a single number - 32!

For Communism to survive, there need to be Capitalists. They are inter-dependant, and every economy in the world thrives in that grey area between the two. It is just word play to create more 'intellectuals' who wear spectacles and carry large bound folders. If an economy is in shambles, it is just because of the people who facilitate this exchange - who move the money through the respective channels. And the government (of every country in the world) is always the biggest money-launderer, and they are legal :) How else can the tax money of an employee be converted as a poll sop to Prabhavathi? 

The only tragedy is that when we do it, it becomes illegal. Poor Robin Hood knows. And so do all the money launderers in the country - Julian Assange will give us that list soon. When they do it, it is called good governance! 

Long live Democracy (yes, that's a farce too!) :)

Scuba Diving at Netrani Island!

It often happens that amazing experiences come our way when least expected.

Life is beautiful when such experiences keep cropping up more and more often :)

SCUBA diving at Netrani island was one such little gem, which just happened - no planning, no preparation. We were on a trip through Karnataka (actually sort of a pilgrimage by road) and we saw a poster for SCUBA at a restaurant while having lunch. One call to the company, and a visit later, we decided to stay back in Murudeshwar for another day - just so we can dive, and boy! Are we glad we stayed back :)

Dreamz Diving, run by Mr Rawat and his team, is located at Murudeshwar and has a branch at Goa. Netrani Island, about 18 kms off the coast of Murudeshwar, is supposed to be the best diving spot on mainland India (and we came to know that after we finished the dive and came back!). 

Four of us set out for the PADI Beginners dive at about 1030, and reached the dive spot at around 1145. Mr Rawat, and two of his divers - Sunil and Surendar took us down upto about 25 feet, and we were in wonderland! 

Contrary to public opinion Diving does not need us to be master swimmers! Even if you don't know the fundamentals of floating, a beginners dive is do-able. Afterall, we don't get to do anything in the dive! We are literally carried along by the dive master :) Once we get used to breathing through the apparatus, and to adjusting the buoyancy control, we are good to go. Takes about 10 mins to get used to it, and the remaining 20-30 mins is sheer bliss! We had good visibility that day, and the coral reef was pretty much teeming with fish of all colors, shapes, and sizes. It truly was like being live inside Discovery Channel.

The dive costed us 3500/- per head. Goa and Andaman are slightly cheaper, but that is because the dive shops do much more business, and the diving teams are seldom small. The experience of being the only divers at a spot is not something you can get at Goa! And like Mr Rawat anyway mentioned, Netrani is supposed to be a much better dive spot.

Diving gets you hooked. I'm already looking forward to the next step - of the Basic and Open water PADI courses. 

If you are looking to dive, Dreamz Diving is a great option. Murudeshwar is well connected with Goa and Bangalore. It is on the Konkan Railway too. Accommodation is quite economical (as it is a pilgrimage town) and the dive shop will take care of the rest. One word of advice is that if you are going with family, or as a large group, insist on a bigger boat - we went on a fishing canoe, and unless you are used to the sea, it could be quite terrifying :) And yes, Dreamz Diving has underwater photography included in the package, and if you are lucky, you will see Dolphins on the way too (we saw two schools of them). 

Till the next such experience comes along, we keep dreaming of waterworld!