I finally read Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol”. I kept putting off reading it since it wasn’t really getting the reviews which inspired me to pick it up. And you know what? The critics are right. If it wasn’t for the DaVinci Code, I would not have picked it up. It is a big book and most of it could easily have been left on the editing room floor. There is way too much useless information which serves neither the plot nor the story. Most of the novel happens inside the mind of the lead character (Robert Langdon again) where he chews the information, through an inner monolog, presented by another character often in contrast to his own beliefs. And he’s supposed to be the expert. The remaining pages are mostly about which doors the characters open and how long they have to walk down to the next door. Details about the carpet on the floor, about the paintings on the wall and the objects on a desk – all irrelevant as far as the story is concerned. The book could easily have been better written in about a hundred pages without omitting a single plot or story thread.

I am disappointed. Maybe I had too much expectations from it to begin with. Somehow I assumed that the author who wrote DVC could do better than most other writers even on his low day. It took a while to wade through this book and to be honest it never picked up the pace. There is no plot actually except movement from A to B and from B to C – the wisps of story which do manage to survive are so weak that its an effort to imagine their existence. I suppose if someone other than Brown had written it then expectations would have been more realistic.

The theories in the book have very little substance and the cutting-edge technologies mentioned are based more on Star Trek than actual progress. The “national security crisis” that has everyone running from pillar-to-post turns out to be a dud in the end. Much like a politician coming out of the closet – not much there in terms of a national crisis, except maybe for the individual concerned.

While I realize that Brown is a best-selling author but I also know that its not because of his writing style or prose any more than the popularity of the TV serial “Baywatch” was based on the strength of its plots. I feel the editors just wanted to capitalize on the success of DVC before the momentum faded. The result is a rushed novel eager to get to the bookshelves with the editors asleep at the wheels.

I don’t doubt for a minute that even as I write this, Tom Hanks is busy memorizing the lines for the next movie in this series. The novel reads like a screenplay and not a story written to satiate the mind through words. The words are written with a camera in mind and you can almost hear a director yelling “cut” at the end of each scene. So for me, no more Dan Brown’s books. If I really want to read his next book, I’ll just wait for the movie to come out and download its script. It’ll be a much faster read without any compromise on content.

We had a family get together last week. My brother came from Kuala Lumpur and my parents came down from Ahmedabad. The last time all of us came together was four years back when my younger daughter was born. Four years is a long time and this reunion was long overdue. A lot has changed over these years but a lot more has remained the same. And since I live here and the changes were relatively gradual, it took my brother to point out all the stuff that isn’t the same in and around Bhopal.

He was shocked to see the condition of the roads and the greenery around the place. The last time he was here the roads were a joke. He was so impressed with the smooth ride all the way home from the airport twenty-two kilometers away. The weather at this time is near perfect and we took this opportunity to visit almost all the parks during his short stay here. They were all maintained and manicured. I knew that but I had forgotten their sorry state half a decade back. Truly a lot has been done and we have taken to the new layout like a fish takes to water.

Almost all his favorite hangouts from yesteryear have changed. The hep (read ‘yuppie’ here, if you remember what that once meant) crowd has changed their evening rendezvous points in favor of the newer markets with the brand-name showrooms. Even their sense of style has matured. One of the most obvious change has been the lack of smokers hanging around chai-wallahs. Almost no one smokes anymore and that is a very good thing. True, the ‘cut-chai’ concept is still very much alive in Bhopal but the garnishing that earlier used to be part of that lifestyle have since moved on in favor of healthier habits. Kids no longer roam the evening roads on scooters borrowed from their fathers or uncles. Instead most of them zoom past on the latest offerings from multi-national motorcycle manufacturers.

That is a double-edged sword. There is no doubt that a lot of progress has been made in recent years and the average Bhopali pocket has grown in leaps and bounds but the responsibility that should have been instilled by the parents into these kids is sadly lacking. Almost none of them use helmets and almost all of them drive at breakneck speeds through traffic moving half as fast.

Anyway, we all enjoyed ourselves. This time things just fell into place. I can’t remember the last time we had enjoyed each other’s company so much. I don’t know how much we have aged in the last four years but we have grown up a lot. We talked, we shared and we symbiotically grew like we had never done before. This was a major departure from the last time when we did come together but pretty much did our own thing though under one roof.

For one thing, this time my brother helped me migrate to Facebook. I even made a few friends, nothing close to the five hundred plus my brother has but a small start anyway. This proved shocking for my wife since I remember telling her earlier (and several times as a matter of fact) that I was too old for this seemingly teenage indulgence. Now she is sure I am going through some kind of a mid-life crises. Let’s see, so far its been fun.

It’s the middle of November and I am sitting here in my T-shirt and shorts. The ceiling fan is whirring overhead though not very fast. Where is the cold? This is about as real an example of global warming, if there was any doubt to begin with. And its raining. Has been for almost the whole week now – without break. The news reports say that this is the first time when rains in November have managed to increase the level of water in the lakes of Bhopal. It hasn’t happened before.

This year the monsoon was slightly below normal but this rain seems to have decided to make up for the loss. And its not just rain, its thunder storms with heavy rains. I don’t even want to think about what this is going to end up doing to our winter crops. But so far the alarm bells have not warned about any major damage.

Late November and early December is a time of beautiful weather in Bhopal so most of the carnivals and food-festivals are planned around this time. This is especially true of weddings and festivities. But with flooded grounds and soaking infrastructures, things will have to be shifted ahead till the weather permits. I don’t think I’d allow my kids on metal merry-go-rounds and Ferris-wheels with the possibility of rains shorting out the works. Dangerous. Same with the food fests… rain spoilers I mean.

Its almost as if the whole system of weather has shifted forward by a month or more. The rains came pretty late and now, when its time for winter, rains are the dominant weather. At this rate, winter will eventually be squeezed out because summer time is fixed and unchanging. The period of heat is getting longer and longer. Where it used to be about four months when I was a kid, now its almost six months. And its hotter these days than it was before. I remember people being able to walk around in the sun during the summer. They did avoid it if they could but it was not a requirement. Now its nearly impossible to step outside during the summer afternoons without some protection from the heat. At this rate the only alternative left for our future generations would be to develop technology sufficiently advanced to push the earth farther away from the sun. That would increase the number of days in a year but at least it will reduce the intensity of solar energy reaching us. Of course, it will be much cheaper to just enforce proper emission norms for all people around the world but knowing mankind, I think it will be easier to push the earth farther out in space. We will just keep blaming everyone else and hope that someone else will sort out the problems. Economics is the core of any industrialized society and the economics of reversing global warming make it unfeasible for countries and corporations driven largely by profit.

Just saying no, for example, to fossil fuels will not change anything. No one will listen. But if better and efficient public transport systems were put in place making personal transport redundant, then managing this problem becomes a real possibility. Same with everything else, we need viable alternatives. Till such time as these alternatives are found, I guess winters will keep getting smaller and smaller till one day our future generations will regard them only as a myth.

Driving home a couple of nights ago I started wondering how fast am I actually moving. I mean the speedometer said around 25 km/h through bumper to bumper traffic but I guess it wasn’t the whole picture. I got home and just on an impulse, decided to work it out.

These findings are rough estimates but the order of their magnitude seems correct with the information available to us at the present time.

Let’s see if I look at the rotation of the earth, with an average diameter of 12,800 km from the earth’s center, I am moving at around 1,500 km/h at any given time with my latitude here in Bhopal. Then there is the earth moving around the sun. If we take the distance from the earth to the sun at 1 AU (150 million km), my average speed is 107,000 km/h. At this speed the earth is able to complete one revolution around the sun each year. Suddenly I am starting to get a little dizzy.

The sun is also moving in a complex orbit around its neighborhood of stars. During our lifetime this speed is around 72,000 km/h. This speed changes over time with the change in orbit but on a galactic scale it takes hundreds of years for any significant changes to show so this value is good enough for our calculation.

Now we come to the sun moving around the centre of our galaxy, the milky way. We are 30,000 light years away from the core’s center. With an orbit of about 200 million years our speed comes out to be around 800,000 km/h at any given time. And the milky way also moves around in many complex orbits. First it moves around with respect to its own group of local galaxies (like Andromeda) and this speed is around 144,000 km/h.

Next comes the tricky part. There is a some radiation left over from the Big Bang known as the cosmic microwave background. Using Doppler effect to triangulate this radiation we can roughly calculate that our local group of galaxies is moving at 2,200,000 km/h with respect to this cosmic center.

Unfortunately, we can’t just add up the speeds and come up with an answer since some of these speeds are in opposite directions and on different planes of movement. A good estimate after adding and subtracting these speeds yields that the sun is moving at 1,300,000 km/h (or 1.3 million km/h) with respect to the cosmic radiation, our point of reference. That is even when I am just sitting here typing away. Pretty fast.

There are many other speeds involved which I didn’t take into account here. The earth and the moon circle each other around their center of gravity and that adds another speed, though minor, to these calculations. Plus there is supposed to be another group of super clusters of galaxies much like our own called the Great Attractor. This has not yet been proved but the way gravity bends space around its assumed location, we can tell that something massive is there at the edge of our universe, pulling at us in one specific direction.

So I guess my speedometer was a little off and its no wonder I get so woozy all the time. I thought it was just me, but the fact is that the whole universe is out to get me dizzy by whizzing me at 1.5 million km/h (35 times around the earth on the hour, every hour, 24/7) even when I think I am sitting comfortably in my chair minding my own business.

The wiring around my table is a sheer nightmare. There is a web of cables and peripherals that is impossible to clean let alone service when problems crop up. And with these tens of wires knotting around each other, things break down on a weekly basis. I’ve brought electricians over for getting a permanent solution to this problem many times but they end up either throwing their hands up in exasperation or quoting rates that would easily cover new wiring for an entire house.

So I decided to do the switchboard myself. I didn’t think it was a big deal, time consuming certainly, but not really a technical horror. It took me almost a week to get the thing made and the headache was more than I had anticipated. Had I known that it would be such a problem, I would have given up long before getting it down even on paper.

The main problem was that most of the switchboards available here in Bhopal are pre-fabricated fixed sized ones. The number of switches and panels is very clearly limited to the common usage like one plug, two lights, one fan and one dimmer. Or a combination with still only one fan and one plug. You get multiples of these but not the way I wanted. I needed no lights, no fans but twelve two-pin plugs, seven three-pin plugs, ten switches, one fuse, one indicator and one dimmer for the six inch cooling fan keeping my motherboard calm. Plus I needed one cable for power coming in, one going out to the UPS and then one coming back from the UPS to assorted plugs and switches that needed a battery backup.

There wasn’t a lot of choice for the layout, most of the connections had a very fixed place with respect to everything else. Like the battery backed up plugs had to be all in the same area with a little space around it for clarity. The two printers and the scanner connections all had to be near each other, same with the audio and the USB drive power supply.

None of the boards available fit the bill here. They were all too small for this. I went to industrial sized ones but they were too big. In the end I got an industrial board and cut it to size myself. Then marked the space needed for all the electrical parts and accessories with a set-square and a permanent ink marker. That was the easy part. Cutting the holes out and making the frame is what caused blisters on my hands. I guess its been a while since I have done any real carpentry and finishing. This was a really hard fire-retardant fiber board and it didn’t want to be machined in any way. I almost gave it all up halfway through when I couldn’t manage to get it done the way I had planned.

But it worked out in the end. Even the spike protectors and the short-circuit buzzer fit in despite the plentiful fabrication and machining errors because I was working mainly with portable tools and had no real work area for securing the work pieces. It meant finger numbing pain in bending and striping the wires during fabrication. But now as I sit here looking at it, I can’t help but feel glad that I stuck to it till the end. And I know its psychological but somehow I think all my digital stuff is running more smoothly now than it used to with the original mess of extension plugs and knotted wires.

Tolkien’s rhyme looks deceptively simple and yet belies a pit-reaching depth into the bowels of human psyche. Each morning we begin our daily grind to possess shiny crowns of self-professed gold which by evening turn out to be nothing more than a leprechaun’s jest. Each night, as we pull our blankets over our heads, the last thoughts before restless sleep are more plans to do it all over again tomorrow. Hope is both a blessing and a scourge of mankind. The proverbial end of the rainbow is just as far away no matter how much, how hard and how far we run. It moves with us matching our speed and stamina.

Too deep? LOL, probably. I think the overall philosophy is pretty sound, I may have gone overboard with its execution. The underlying logic does feel true. Each day, every day, we chase after things that deep within us we know to be transient and fickle. While the things we know to be worthy are neglected because of their apparent lack of sheen. And the world moves on each day with blinders on and the mind switched off while the stomach rules the realm of sensory perception.

What is the source of this sudden insight? This is Dusshera time in India. It is a major Hindu festival celebrated each year to commemorate the victory of good over evil. And in many places, including here in Bhopal, large fairs are organized with lights and fire-crackers and burning of huge effigies of evil demon kings of lore. This year, at the festival, there were hawkers selling the usual bows and arrows, tridents, maces, swords and spears made of wood for kids to play with and reenact the battles that took place in our mythology.

There were two types of these toys. One made of varnished bamboo and the other covered in brilliantly colored metal foils. I recommended my kids to take the bamboo ones but they wanted the ones with the glistening metallic foil. So we ended up with a whole armory of these toys. They did look cool. An hour after we got home, the foil started peeling off and for my younger daughter, if it peels, it will be peeled off. There is no way around that for her. She won’t rest till she takes the entire covering off, scratching and gnawing at it with her nails and teeth.

What eventually came out under the foil was almost crumbling plywood, most likely from an abandoned scrap pile. Within minutes after that the toys became useless. The blades separated from the handle, the bow collapsed on itself and the big lumps fell off from the maces. It was the thin foil which was holding the shapes together. I am sure the bamboo ones would have lasted much longer. It certainly didn’t look as glittery but a half-inch cross-section of plywood three feet long doesn’t stand a chance against it.

I guess that’s why I remembered Tolkien’s words and their far-reaching implications. We take too many things at face value and then regret the lack of value once the brilliance is tarnished sooner than anticipated. This isn’t just about the toys but mainly about some of the “glorifying” attributes of life we assume to be shining example of our own grandeur. And in our endeavor to establish our own undisputed superiority, we repeatedly choose to dance with the devil just one more time in hopes of gaining ground that we never quite manage to grasp.

One thing I have noticed about writing blogs. Once you start to lag behind in posting entries, it just keeps piling up and it becomes increasingly difficult to start it up again as the gap starts widening. After a while you get so out of practice that its almost like starting afresh. My brain loves to procrastinate and I may be one of the rare human beings, I hope anyway, who can lie around in a mud pit all day long and call it bliss… oink.

Summer is nearing its end here in Bhopal and the days are starting to get shorter. There is an expectant feel to the air as the seasons change to usher in a new winter. Though it is not getting cooler by any means, it is starting to get more tolerable in the mornings and evenings. Every evening I have to get up a few minutes earlier to switch on the lights outside. I am a summer person at heart and I could happily pass my days in an old colonial courtyard on the edge of Rajasthan’s Thar desert with the rolling sand dunes for my sole visual delight.

I grew up in Rajasthan and I have a precious memory from my childhood of spending a summer on the edge of its desert. My aunt was posted there as the principal of a government school and we had gone to visit her during a summer break. She had lived in a single story walled house with a huge courtyard as was the custom in that area at the time. All the rooms were on the three insides of a nearly square walled structure of stone with a huge gate in the middle of the fourth wall. I think she had almost ten rooms all lined up one after the other on the three sides. The courtyard took up most of the space, it was huge. There was a well in the middle and several large trees around it. Looking back, I remember the bliss and not much detail, I must have been five or six.

It was blistering during the days and freezing during the nights. After the evening meals, we used to light a fire in the courtyard and sit around it wrapped in blankets till it was time to sleep. Every day my aunt’s caretakers used to tell us ghost stories and the stories of constellations above us. The stars used to be so clear and close that I could almost touch them with my finger if I raised it up. There was no electricity there at the time and we used to walk around at night with lanterns that used to come up to my knees. Everything was magic and my imagination used to soar forever in that place.

There were dilapidated forts and castles of ancient kings all around us in that area and we used to pack lunch and go exploring on most days. There are a lot of forts in Rajasthan. Of course, nothing of value has remained there after all this time but since the structures are made of stone in a arid land, they have survived fairly preserved as mute witnesses to their ancient glory. Even the underground dungeons of those dynasties have lasted for anyone who wants to explore.

For me it’s a happy place full of safety and gleeful childish abandon, growing up in the land of the kings.

For me the question of whether God exists or not does not arise. I know He exists but I can no more prove it mathematically than I can prove what and how I feel. But that doesn’t and should not stop people from trying. Its silly really, if you think about it, such a big universe and so many laws governing it; yet to think that it exists for its own sake.

The watch theory will not convince diehard atheists. But then nothing else will either. They have managed to self-delude themselves to the point where they are not willing to concede even to the possibility of a higher power. Ironically, these very people are more than happy to quote theoretical scientific literature left, right and center to further their beliefs. They forget so easily that the basis of scientific enquiry is, at least, conceding to the possibility of other outcomes than the one they are proposing. Science is self-correcting and that is its absolute advantage over other systems of beliefs.

This brings us to the watch theory. It’s pseudo-scientific logic directed at the modernists who consider themselves too advanced to believe in ‘archaic’ concepts of a higher power. It states, and I am paraphrasing here, that if you were walking along a deserted road and came across an ordinary rock lying on the side of the road, would you pick it up to examine it? Logic dictates that you would not because there are countless other like it all around. Now, in the same spirit, if you were to find a glistening brand new watch, would you stop to investigate? If we use the same logic then yes you would. Why? Because a watch is made up of hundreds of finely crafted parts each fitting into a whole system of mechanics that works to tell the time. Metals are polished, lettering is engraved, the casing is casted, the glass is ground and buffed. If you were asked if such a thing could exist naturally, you would logically say, no. You would have no problem believing that a creator has to be involved to make that watch, it cannot exist in nature by itself. You would also agree that surely the watch could not have evolved from simpler mechanisms on its own over time. Say from a sun-dial. The gears did not grow to fit the shape and nor did the spring slowly appear over time to retain the energy required to move the mechanism accurately.

We are sure that the watch did not evolve. Looking at it we can see that it has been made. A watchmaker exists who has created it. We will agree that the watch is indeed made from materials found within the earth. But still we could not honestly bring ourselves to believe that the watch has created itself or it evolved into its present shape by trial and error.

Now look up from the watch at another human being. Yes, we are made from the same earth. And we are mind-bogglingly more complex than a watch. We are not only capable of making the watch, we are also capable of understanding its function or need for existence. We can improve it. Can the rocks become human beings over time any more than the watch on their own? We are a miracle of creation but we look at ourselves so often that we have ceased to wonder at the wonder that we are.

What have we done to our world? Swine flu! How has a virus known to affect pigs exclusively translated to us? Have we suddenly become pigs? Or have the pigs embraced the attributes of humanity. Recent outbreak of this virus is creating havoc in many cities in India, especially for parents concerned about the safety of their children. Many schools have been closed fearing the spread of infection among its students.

I’m not a doctor but from what I have read in the newspapers, this thing is curable, if diagnosed in time. Every day the government is assuring people that it has more than enough stock of medicines to combat this problem. But the irony is that despite the hype, normal flu kills more than five hundred people a day! In India alone! The only difference is that no one is talking about normal flu and no one has done any compilation of statistics for it in India. Globally, common flu kills five hundred thousand people every year as compared to about twelve hundred people who have died around the world of swine flu this year.

People are scared. And rightfully so since the worst affected are the kids. The underlying logic is that kids come together at school and could potentially create a epidemic through contact with other kids. Now many state governments are closing off schools in the hopes of curtailing the spread of the virus any further. One of the main research bodies for infectious diseases in the world is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US. For the H1N1 swine flu virus, the CDC has noted that most infections continue to be mild – similar to seasonal flu – and recovery is extremely quick. The majority of people infected with the virus make a full recovery without requiring medical attention or antiviral drugs. In fact, we may be making the problem worse by collecting way too many sick people or people with weakened immunity due to normal flu, in government medical facilities. These sick and scared people are coming in contact with all kinds of infections and I am sure that can’t be good.

The swine flu virus normally spreads like any other influenza virus, i.e. from coughs and sneezes or by touching contaminated surfaces and then touching the nose or mouth. Symptoms are similar to those of normal flu, and may include fever, sneezes, sore throat, coughs, headache, and muscle or joint pains. Usually these symptoms can last up to a week. The CDC also notes that most cases worldwide have been mild so far and most hospitalizations and deaths have been of persons that also had underlying conditions such as asthma, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, or a weakened immune system.

Swine flu is treatable. The government has repeatedly assured people that it has more than enough stock of Tamiflu (oseltamivir) or Relenza (zanamivir) for the treatment and/or prevention of infection. These are the drugs recommended by the CDC for swine flu. There are also many competent bodies working around the world to develop a vaccine for this virus and hopefully by the end of this year or beginning of next, we will have a vaccine that will inoculate people against H1N1.

I think the main problem here in India is the usual one. Our irresponsible media has sensationalized the problem. They are responsible for creating a panic when logical concerted efforts can curb this problem without hassles. But then who will watch their news channels?

My elder daughter has recently discovered the joy of baking. And so far she is loving the overall experience – and so am I. Nearly everyday she bakes a cake or cup-cakes. After a few initial problems her baking is almost perfected. She had tried many recipes from cookbooks that we had. I also found her several cake recipes online from various cooking sites. None of their products tasted as good as our expectations. Finally we consulted Ai, currently in Singapore. It was her recipe that did the trick and every cake since then has turned out almost perfect. Ai conducts cooking classes while she’s in Delhi so she knows exactly what ingredients are available here in India and how to mix them up for best results.

My daughter is eleven now, which according to Ai is the ideal age to start things up with baking and cooking in general. Of course, an adult is always around when its time for the oven or the gas. It isn’t very wise to let a child handle high risk appliances till she completely understands their convenience as well as unforgiving nature. She is able to handle the mixing and the blending all on her own – and that is the trickiest part of baking a good cake. You have to understand each of the ingredients and their contribution in the finished product. Once that becomes instinctive, the rest is a piece of cake…

For those who want to try it out, I’m paraphrasing Ai’s recipe for baking a cake that someone my daughter’s age or older, can bake under adult supervision. And it’s a good starting recipe.

Here’s what you need to start things:

• 2 fresh eggs (at room temperature)
• 100 gm unsalted butter (also at room temperature)
• 100 gm powdered sugar
• 100 gm maida (finely ground wheat flour)
• 1 flat tea-spoon baking powder
• one and the half table spoon milk
• a small pinch of salt
• few drops of vanilla essence

First, prepare the cake baking tray by greasing it properly then sprinkle little mixture of maida and powdered sugar. Then combine maida, baking powder and salt. After combining, finely sieve the mixture three times to get rid of any inconsistencies.

Beat the butter, when turns light in color add powdered sugar spoon by spoon and go on beating. When the mix turns light in color add one spoon of the sieved mixture and add egg one by one beating continuously. When batter turns uniform add the sieved mixture spoon by spoon till all the mixture is added. Stop mixing the batter when peaks are formed as the mixing head is lifted off the batter.

Remove the beater and use a heavy big spoon to toss the batter adding milk and vanilla essence.

Bake it in a pre-heated oven for 12 to 15 minutes (till done) at a temperature of 180° C (325° F). Check it by inserting a tooth-pick into the cake, if batter sticks to tooth-pick bake for a few minutes more. Once the tooth-pick comes out clean, stop baking and take the cake out of the oven.

Cool for a few minutes at room temperature and its ready to eat.

This is a tasty and simple recipe for those starting out with baking cakes. I can say from personal experience that the finished product is really great. After a few successes of this, you can easily advance to other types of cakes by substituting chocolate, nuts or raisins for flavouring instead of vanilla essence.