Tell Me Why

Before wikipedia became so popular and put them out of business, encyclopaedias were in every home - huge volumes of information available to us at our fingertips. They may seem primitive to us now, especially as they lack a search function - but I still remember the pleasure of going through the huge volume - the scent of the pages transporting me to another world.

We had the Tell Me Why series of books in our house - allegedly written by a Mr. Arkady Leokum - atleast the guy's name used to be on the cover page of the books. The books were named Tell Me Why, Still More Tell Me Why, Here's More Tell me Why and so on. Each book claimed to answer hundreds of questions - seems anachronistic in the age of Wikipedia with its multimillion pages of information.

For a young child like me who enjoyed the company of books more than people, Tell Me Why was a wondrous companion and I spent hours upon hours poring through the various sections in the books. Each book answered questions on various scientific and sociological disciplines including botany, paleontology, astronomy, physics, zoology, culture, literature, philiosophy among others.

Ever wondered "Why humans have hair?", "Who invented plastic?" or "Can fish hear?". Were you ever curious about "Who was the first astronaut?", "Why do cannibals eat people?" or "Why did the dinosaurs become extinct". All I had to do was open the books and search for it. Of course the lack of an equivalent of the search function meant I had to go through tons of other questions before I found my relevant query - but these other questions themselves intrigued me and thus hours were spent in their company.

Then i grew up, started to lose interest in books and gain more interest in the people around me. These books were lost in the back of my cupboard - a couple were probably sold off - unknown to me and passed out of my memory.
Recently as I was cleaning my bookshelf (probably after a decade :D) I found a couple of these books - yellowed and musty but still intact. And as i turned the pages, the years melted away magically.

I was a 8 year old kid again with my encyclopaedia, reading about - "Why does an opossum hang by its tail?" and "Why do dogs bury bones?"

Life is good.

How to be more interesting

So I was perusing through some books in my office library (in the non non-fiction section obviously) when I kinda gazed upon the adjacent shelf where the self-help books were kept.

And then a title caught my eye. The title of this post. How to be more interesting. Feeling that familiar feeling of unbridled mirth welling up in my self, I inched closer to see the author of this ridiculously named book. The name of the author left me in shock - Edward De Bono. The Edward De Bono. The guy who's made his name and untold millions churning out those lateral thinking books!

I would have thought at least De Bono with all his expertise in lateral thinking would have the basic marketing sense that no customer in his right mind would be caught dead reading that book!
I mean suppose you're this under-achiever (i simply abhor the alternative term for under-achiever that starts with L and refuse to use it) who people find boring and find it difficult to string together a conversation without putting the opposite person to sleep! The last thing you would do is to been seen buying the book and be a confirmed bore.

I would like to see how many copies of that book have been sold! I mean was De Bono drunk when he allowed the editor or whoever to name this book. Or is this a fake, not written by De Bono? Is my office library stacking up books of imposter? Whatever may be the case I don't think that I'd have any further faith in De Bono teaching me any strategies on how to think!

Ok, so finally now that you have waded through this utterly boring asinine crap masquerading as a post, let me ask you this.

Do you think I need to read that book?

Maximum City

I just have completed reading the bestseller Maximum City by Suketu Mehta. It's a book about Bombay or Mumbai as it had just been rechristened when Mehta moved back to it after having lived 20 odd years in New York. The book is almost 600 pages long and people who generally get scared of such huge books (must be something to with the childhood fear of textbooks which themselves were gargantuan monsters) or those who don't read anything other than the Harry Potter meganovels, would be apprehensive to wade through its pages.

However once you do so, you find yourself entrenched into a world that seems at once so familiar to Mumbaikars (when he describes the crowded state of the metropolis) but also sometimes seem to be happening in some far off world. For Mehta's book is peppered with the accounts and experiences of some of the more extreme citizens of Mumbai - extortionists, gangsters, bar dancers, super-cops, Bollywood directors and super rich and super-orthodox Jain patriarchs. Mehta has found himself in the company of varied personalities like Bal Thackeray, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Sanjay Dutt and Chotta Shakeel at one point or other during the course of the book.

I found myself hating and applauding Mumbai at various points of time, alternating between wanting to move from this accursed city as soon as possible or strengthening my resolve to stick it out here between different chapters. But throughout I was constantly completely engrossed in the simple words (he also has peppered the novel with coarse Bombaiyya phrases that seem so natural to our ears) that Mehta uses to weave a rich and vividly coloured tapestry which is what this novel really is.

I spent all my free time this past week devouring up pages of this book, while I should really have been studying for the dreaded CAT which looms ever closer. But i have a long history of starting mega-novels just before an important exam. Like the time I started and completed Ayn Rand's Fountainhead 10 days before my second Semester Engg exams.

Anyhoo, I seriously recommend this book. I am sure that once you start, you will be hooked onto it, and when you finish you will have that heady feeling within you telling you that you've read something worthwhile, something that will remain with you.
Peace out.