A bookworm’s journey to Audible


Imagine this, From Class 5 till I graduated high school, I read close to 600 books!. I had memberships everywhere;  Dad’s collection, neighbour’s collections, school libraries, Government ones and of course private circulatory library. I begged, borrowed (but never stole) from literally every possible person who can lend me a book. I even saved my pocket money and bought books, Volga Ganga was my first. Being sympathetic to my addiction, the lady from circulatory library reduced borrowing price just for me ! My price chart was Re. 1 for 300 pages book, and Re.2 for 600 pages.

Then the drought hit !

Its true that the Professional collages, and jobs take the living hell out of any hobbies. At least that was my excuse. My reading habit went into limbo. For next one decade I managed to read only four books and all four of them were written by Dan Brown ! Of Couse there were half finished mass hysteria books from Robin Sharma, Paulo Coelho and Ayan Rand.

I gave multiple attempts to get back into grove, but there simply wasn’t any time left in my days. Commute to office (duh) was one possible attempt but my books had to brave Chennai Sunlight and London Rains. None of these worked out. With very limited success I managed to finish paperback series of MJ Akbar.

As one more attempt by pouring some money into a kindle (I discourage it) but the challenge here is, time. If there is no time for paperback what difference would Kindle make. Amazon Echo gave some relief as it ‘read me’ couple of Kindle books, but again, I needed to be physically in the vicinity of Echo throughout.

Finally now, Audible.in came to rescue.

Finally I could do all mundane mechanical (but mandatory) tasks of the day and still read a fantastic book ! The books themselves are little more expensive than their Kindle/paperback counterparts, but this arrangement works for me !!

Now get this : Just in 2019 I was able to close my year’s resolution of 52 books and I am on track for 52 more for 2020. Just in 15 months, I have crossed Scholar stage and now I am a master. Apparently, you can now approach me about questions on what why and where and I will have answer.

God bless Amazon 🙂

P.S. This is NOT a paid post. Amazon did not pay me to write this post.

He is not all that tall, you see…


Question : If you are a furniture company, what should be your core competencies ?

I would list a) Ability to pick good laminates, b) put it on compressed wood disguised as ply and more importantly c) ‘get the measurement right’!!. Its that simple right. Even I thought so, till I watched this:

Its an advert of a company (does not matter which) in which, the wifey stereo-typically plays down the choices of Husband, just because she can; and of course we look for good cliche to go with our adverts.

Anyways, this is how it goes :

Hubby : A King sized bed..

Wife : Nope, a Queen Size if fine. He is not that tall, you see…   

Now, if you have not participated in purchase of a bed since British (and their queen) left India, please Google “Bed sizes“. FACT : The King and Queen size beds are of exact same length and it does not matter how tall you are !

Now, these are the sort of things I would expect my furniture company know, wouldn’t I ?

P.S. Perhaps she wanted to say “He is not all that FAT you see” and then may be SJWs like Huffington post PC proofed it corrected it ? Its a wild guess Let me know if you know.

So you think you are a photographer, eh?


Question. What does it mean to be a good photographer and to take a great capture?

I do not mean to offend the large number of “Photographers” in my Social network. But, its apparent that this art is largely limiting itself to aiming at anything and posting it, and more appalling part is,  celebration of mediocrity by their followers. 

So what does really mean to be a photographer ? I mean, apart from being present in right place at right time with right equipment? What makes a photo great? For example Niagara Falls looks great on its own, what is my value addition to make it look it more fantastic ? apart from having bought an expensive camera? [This is Rhetoric Paragraph, don’t answer them]

For example, If I point my phone to sky at 6 PM every day and take a photo with default settings. Does it deserve a WOW ? Let me know.

I don’t thinks so.

Anyways, This is not a “how to” post, I don’t seem to have any authority to write about it. This post is about a map on arrogance of social media photographers. Warning: watching this graph can you cause severe urge of self assessment and could generate deep philosophical questions and complexes 🙂

Source : the great Internet (Not seems to be attributed to anyone specific) – Happy to credit if someone points me to right direction.

Bonus : Once you have taken a random shot, you can use below technique to make it great.

Via Details are important

Kalash – the lost tribe of Vedic India ?


This is more of a note rather than a post. I wasn’t even looking (or heard) for Kalash, but stumbled upon this when I was researching on ‘India connection’ of Romanis and Yezidis.

Now get this –  Kalash are the “smallest minority” of Pakistan – we all know what that means.

We have criminally low number of documentaries on Kalash community. Among the few posted, they just manage to touch the surface. Anyways, One of the good ones is linked below – please watch.

Few of things will immediately should catch your attention are :

  • The worship of Vedic Gods (Indra and Mahadev) and not Classical Gods. This must indicate time-period of isolation from Indian civilization.
  • Menstruating women are separated from community (Watch the documentary) and its a mandatory social vacation.
  • Dead are buried above the ground. Crows represent ancestors

Let me know what you think :