Manjhi The Mountain man.

One of the best movies of 2015. A must watch . Don't miss this one .




"Bhagvaan ke bharose mat bethiye, kya pata Bhagvaan hamaare bharose baitha ho "

Dashrath Manjhi: Never depend upon God.
[pause]
Dashrath Manjhi: Who knows that God may depend upon you?

 "Tu apna akbaar kahe nahi chaap de-te, Akhbaar nikalna itna aasan kam hai                                           kya ?Pahaad tode se bhi Mushkil hai..Kya ?..ha ha ha"

Gopal: You said such a big thing so easily and look at me. I wanted to be a honest journalist but only doing politicians pimping. I disgust myself!
Dashrath Manjhi: Then why don't you start your own newspaper?
Gopal: Starting your own newspaper is not that easy.
[smiling]
Dashrath Manjhi: Is it more difficult that "cutting a hill"?
[then laughing out loud on Gopal's reaction]

Dwarf planets

Today Jaishan surprised me by naming the five dwarf planets in the solar system.
He read about it on his own at the school library !

For the uninitiated, the Dwarf planets are heavenly bodies that are not satellites and they have an orbit around the sun .But are small enough that they cannot clear the its orbit around the sun of other objects.
 http://space-facts.com/dwarf-planets/

Saving for posterity.
- A proud father.

Dwarf planets

Today Jaishan surprised me by naming the five dwarf planets in the solar system.
He read about it on his own at the school library !

For the uninitiated, the Dwarf planets are heavenly bodies that are not satellites and they have an orbit around the sun .But are small enough that they cannot clear the its orbit around the sun of other objects.
 http://space-facts.com/dwarf-planets/

Saving for posterity.
- A proud father.

Harry Potter series.

Before reading the book , I had a kind of a revulsion of the HP series. May be after watching the movies. But reading the books changed my perception.

I really loved the HP series. It has a great story but what I liked most is the subtle message that the author tries to convey through her characters .Very nice!

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” - Albus Dumbledore (Chamber of Secrets).

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it is to be young .    - Albus Dumbledore (HP5 Pg 826)

Ofcourse it is happening inside your head ,Harry, but why on earth should that mean that its not real.  - (HP7)

Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and above all those who live without love  (HP7)

It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited for power are those who never sought it - (HP7 )

Book lists -

This is a list for future reference:

NPR's top 100 SciFi and Fantasy books of all time.
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-books

Reddits top 200 books :
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/78785.Reddit_Top_200_Books_list_1

When Breath becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi

Loved Paul Kalaniti's memoir . Its a book about love, hope and living and handling suffering .
Highly recommended.

I dont believe in the wisdom of children , nor in the wisdom of the old. There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as we live in this moment
    - pg 35.

With what strife and pains we come into the world we know not, but 'ts is commonly no easy matter to get out of it  - pg 53.

Our patients life and identities may be in our hands, yet death always wins. Even if you are perfect , the world isnt .The secret is to know that the deck is stacked, that you will lose, that your hands or judgeent will slip, and yet still struggle to win for your patients. - pg 115.

The call to protect life -- and not merely life but another's identify; its perhaps not too much to say another's soul -- was obvious in its sacredness - pg 98.

Transition once cancer is diagnosed.
One chapter of my life ended perhaps the whole book was closing. Instead of being the pastoral figure aiding a life transition, I found myself being the sheep, lost and confused  - pg 120.

My carefully planned and hard-won future no longer existed - pg 120.

I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing & everything...The fact of death is unsettling, yet there is no other way to live.

'Dont you think saying goodbye to your chiled make your death more painful? '..'Wouldnt it be great if it did ?' Lucy and I both felt that lifewasnt about avoiding suffering - pg 143.

Even if I'm dying , until I actually die, I am still living - pg 150.

On science and religion
Science may provide he most useful way to organize empirical , reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life : hope , fear, love ,beauty ,envy ,honor, weakness. No system of thought can contain the fullness of human experience - pg 170.

message of Jesus.
The main message of Jesus, I believe, is tat mercy trumps justice every time - pg 171.

My life until my illness could be understood as the linear sum of my choices, now I lived in another world ..where human action paled against super human forces.

Dr. Kalanithi's letter to his daughter:
When you come to one of the many  moments in life where you must give an account of yourself,..what you have done and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man's days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunder for more and more but rests, satisfied.  - pg 199


A poem quoted by Dr.Lucy Kalanithi.
"You left me, sweet , two legacies, --
A legacy of love
A Heavenly Father would content ,
Had He the offer of;

You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me. "
                    - Emily Dickinson .

'Always the seer is a sayer' Emerson wrote, 'somehow his dream is told; somehow he publishes it with solemn joy'.

Books : Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of pilgrimage.

As we grow up and time passes ,a lot of things change. People change and nothing stays  the same for ever and often times we  think about the 'good old times' and 'how great the times would be'.

If you have had such feelings about the past ,then Murakami's new novel will strike a chord.

 Tsukuru Tazaki is friends with four others during sophomore.The five remain always
together. They do everything together and remain together . It is asif each one compliments
the other in equal measure "like a pentagon with all the sides equal" ,then suddenly
Tsukuru is cut off by the other four . No reason is given and no one talks to Tsukuru again.

The entire novel is about Tsukuru dealing with this rejection and how he moves back to a normal life accepting the new reality .

As with any other Murakami book there are tense moments and fast moving story. It has
It is his exploration of simple things that I find interesting/unique and  even addictive.

One of the parts I like the most is Haida recalling a story of his father's (also named Haida)
meeting with a strange man called Midorikawa. Murakami's genius lies in linking the story from the past with the present ,blurring fact and faction. The story can be read here.

Personally I found this more anchored to reality compared to other abstract novels like
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka. That way the novel is close to Norwegian Wood.


Some of the quotes that stuck in my mind:

'But you can't go to that orderly harmonious intimate place?".. 'That place doesn't exist
anymore' he said
    - pg  26

'You can hide memories ,but you cannot erase the history that produced them '
    - pg 36

'What is really important in life is always the things that are secondary'
    - pg 60

'No matter how quite and conformist a person's life seems there is always a time in
the past when they reached an impasse. A time when they went crazy. I guess people need
that sort of a stage in their lives'
    - pg 65.

Some things in life are too complicated to be explained in any language
    - pg 218

There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without blood shed.
No acceptance without a passage through acute loss.
    - pg 261

Out duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect.
    - pg 271

Life is long, and sometimes cruel .Sometimes victims are needed. Someone has to
take on that role.
    - pg 312.

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

Memorable quotes:
He would remind us that there was a brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that not even time could break.

Children aren't coloring books.You don't get to fill them with their favorite colors. 

A farewell
Baba climbed halfway up the ladder, hopped back down and finished the sniffbox from his pocket. He emptied the box ad picked up a handful for dirtfrom the middle of the unpaved road. He kisse the dirt, poured it into the box. Sholved the box in his breast pocket, next to his heart  
    (Amir narrating about Baba just before leaving his country for the last time ) - pg 121.

America was different. America was a river, roaring waterway, unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river , let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far, someplace with no ghosts, no memories and no sins - pg 136.

A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer - pg 301.

Redemption
Sometimes, I think everything he did ,feeding the poor on the streets, building the orphanage, giving money to friends in need, it was all his way of redeeming himself . And that, I believe ,is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good - pg 302.

On Writing Well

This is a wonderful essay. Loved it for the meaning and how it was written.
If you love writing, just go ahead and click the link.

https://theamericanscholar.org/writing-english-as-a-second-language/

Man's search for Meaning - Viktor E Frankl.

There are some books that have a profound impact on your life , some may even be life changers. This was such a book for me.

This is a memoir of Viktor Frankl's experiences at a concentration camp. Through his ordeals there , Viktor Frankl made several observations to find happiness and meaning even when you have lost everything.

It opened my eyes to a new way of looking at suffering in life and through it view what it means to be satisfied and happy with your life. 

Thoroughly enjoyed this book . One of the best books I've read.

Memorable Quotes - There are many quotes that I will hold in my heart. Here are some .

On Human beings :
..for we have come to know man as he really is .After all , man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz. However, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lords prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips - pg 135.

I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment , in contemplation of his belowed. - pg 37

In a position of utter desolation when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings -in a honorable way- in such a position ,man can, through loving contemplation achieve fulfillment - pg 38.

The experiences of camp life show that man [at places where man] does not have a choice of action,man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions .

On Suffering :
If there is a meaning in life at all ,then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life ,even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.  -- pg 67.

it is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence . -- pg 73.

'He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how ' - Nietzsche (pg 76).

On tears :
There was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer . - pg 78

Not only our experiences , but all we have done ,whatever great thoughts we may have had ,and all we have suffered , all this is not lost - pg 82.

The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming an, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered , there is nothing he need to fear anymore -- except his God. - pg 93.

Five stars...cant recomment anymore.

Wild - Cheryl Strayed

A great read.  Got to know some great stuff about REI , the PCT and John Muir.

Some memorable quotes:

The breaking of so great a thing should make an even greater crack
                                          - William Shakespeare ( Antony & Cleopatra).

She loved us more than all the named things in the world 
                                          -pg 14 (about her mother)

She was monolithic and insurmountable. the keeper of my life.
                                            - (about her mother) 

I prayed to the whole universe and hoped that God would be in it, listening to me..
then I faltered. Not because I couldnt find God, bug because suddenly I absolutely did:
God was there, I realized and God had no intention of making things happen or not..


Fear , to a great extent , is born of a story we tell ourselves.
                                             pg 51

I had to change. Not a different person but into a person I used to be .
                                             - pg 57


This was once Mozama, I kept remainding myself. This was once a wasteland of lava and pumice and ash. This was once an empty bowl that took hundreds of years to fill. But has 
as I tried, I couldnt see them in my minds evey. Not the mountain or the wasteland or the 
empty bowl. There was only the stillness and silence of that water.
                                             -  (About Crater lake) .

What if I forgave myself ? I thought . What if I forgave myself even though I have done something I shouldn't have ? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there as no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do ? What if I was sorry , but if I could go back in time I wouldn't do anything differently than I had done ? .. What if what made me do all these things everyone though I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here ? 
                                                   -- pg 258.

Fight Club

Memorable Quotes
Every evening , I died, and every evening  I was born . Ressurected.

Where would Jesus be if no one had written the gospels.

One minute was enough, Tyler said , as person has to work hard for it , but a  minute of perfection was worth the effort .

A moment was the most you could even expect from perfection.

Maybe self improvement isnt the answer..maybe self destruction is the answer - pg 49.

I just dont want to die without a few scars..its is nothing anymore to have a beautify stock body.

Sometimes you wakeup and have to ask where you are - pg 33

you wake up ,and you're nowhere..you waking  and thats enought - pg 33.

The first rule about fight club is you dont talk about fight club - pg 50.

Its only after you've lost everything ,that you're free to do anything - pg 70.

The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly - pg 141.

We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaries and movies starts and rock stars, but we dont - pg 166.

 -- Completed 17-May -2015.

Lesson learnt.

Son and I were building something for the past 2 weeks. It got over finally.
Few hours later a friend steps on it and what we built was broken.

Then..


Me: Oh no.. all our efforts wasted :( :( Why did you leave your friend to do this (angry angry angry).

Son: (excited)  Don't worry Daddy. Lets build it again!!  This time we can complete it in one week!!

Me : Wow! Thanks for the valuable lesson son!

Hello Strava.

Got my free Strava account today. It was a great inspiration for today's run. Great conditions to run this morning at San Diego. So I was able to get a new high today.

Just shy of 10K. That milestone is for another day :)

First 3miler

The first 3 miler! Happy with the timing :)

1000 Pieces !

After 2 weeks we finally complete the 1000Piece puzzle ! (21-Apr-2015)

Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese.

The key to your happiness is to own your own slippers, own who you are , own how you look , own your family , own the talents you have ,and own the ones you dont.
If you keep saying your slippers arent yours, you will die searching , you will die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions,become our destiny.  

All sons should write down every word of what their fathers have to say to them
                                                                        -pg 424.

What incredible discoveries one could make with ones eyes closed.
                                                                        - pg 303.

 What she lacked in education, she made up for in character.
                                                                        (Marion on Almaz. pg:  336).

I am ashamed of our human capacity to hurt and main one another, to desecrate  the boad. Yet it allows me to see the cabalistic harmony of heart peeking out behind lung, f liver and spleen consulting each other under the dome of the diaphragm - these things leave me speechless.
                                                                              -pg 9

She resented the inverse chauvinism of Indians who could only admire things foreign.
                                                                            -pg /?

Wasnt that the definition of home ? Not where you are from , but where you are wanted ?
                                                                              - pg 95

 Perhaps deep in every being, there lingers a desire to bring the circle of life back to its starting point.
                                                                              -pg 101.

When you win, you often lose, thats just a fact.
                                                                               -pg 130.

There is no currency to straighten a warped spirit, or open a closed heart , a selfish heart.
                                                                                - pg 131.

God will judge us ,by.. what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings.I dont think God cares what doctrine we embrace.
                                                                                 -pg 188.

A rich man's faults are covered with money, but a surgeons faults are covered with earth.
                                                                               -pg 203.

If 'ecstasy ' meant a sudden intrusion of the sacred into the oridinary, then it had just happened to me.
                                                                               -pg 648 .

The rold turns on our every action, and our every omission, weather we know it or not.
                                                                                -pg 657.

Completed - 16-Jan- 2016.
Wonderful book , I loved the writing.

Malkosh - The last time you experience something.

There’s a word in Hebrew—malkosh—that means “last rain.” It’s a word that only means something in places like Israel, where there’s a clear distinction between winter and the long, dry stretch of summer. It’s a word, too, that can only be applied in retrospect. When it’s raining, you have no way of knowing that the falling drops would be the last ones of the year. But then time goes by, the clouds clear, and you realize that that rain shower was the one. Having a mother—being mothered—is similar, in a way. It’s a term that I only fully grasp now, with the thirst of hindsight: who she was, who I was for her, what she has equipped me with.

Like a last rain, my mother left behind an earthy scent that lingered long after she was gone. Like a last rain, for a fleeting moment, everything she touched seemed to glow.


Source: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-unmothered

To Kill a mocking bird

 

A simple book in simple language but great meaning. Harper Lee's 'To Kill a mocking bird' 
This book has a lot of good things about treating oneself and others with respect.
A must read .

Memorable quotes -.
I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Mocking birds don't do one thing except make music for us to enjoy...that's why it is a sin to kill a mocking bird.

Before I can live with other folks , I've got to live with myself. The one thing that does not abide
by majority rule is a person's conscience - pg 120

On courage - 
instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand..its when you know you're kicked before before you begin anyway and you see through it no matter what 

You rarely win, but sometimes you do  

One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them - pg 321.

There is just one kind of folks..folks - 

The making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes

The Making of the Atomic Bomb is  comprehensive account of the 'Manhattan project'. One of the greatest projects ever executed .
It is a huge volume with lot of details. I was not able to complete this book. Would read is one more time when i find the time.

Must read for anyone interested in understanding the quest for the atomic bomb.


"It is a profound and necessary truth than the deep things in science  are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them  - Robert Oppenheier"

"Man is not satisfied with a happy idyllic life: has hs the need to fight ad to encounter danger - pg 24"

"That science can be a refuge from the world is a conviction common among men and women who turn to it - pg 113."

". a scientist belongs to the world in times of peace but his country in times of peace but to his country in times of war  - pg 95 (Attributed to Haber)."


Image courtesy - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16884.The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb .

On Parenting

Know when to hold them,
Know when to let go.
Watch their back,
Let them walk on their own.
Teach them what they must know,
Let them learn everything else.
Love them when they are right,
Love them even more when they are not.
Show by example,
Learn from experience.
Be a mother when they are young,
Be their friend when they grow up.
Teach them to respect when they are young,
Earn it when they grow up.


True for fathers too.
Ref: http://qr.ae/z0Ivp