Aala Santhosh Reddy

I look forward to weekends. Saturday to be more precise. This is the day I and Akhil often go out for lunch. We make it a point to eat at a different restaurant each time. However, the exciting part begins after the lunch. A visit to the Crossword book store and then a cup of coffee in Brio. The restaurant located in the store. Do check out their range of coffees. Personally I think they are much better and cheaper than the range one would get elsewhere.

As usual last Saturday we had lunch at Indijoe. Followed it up with a visit Crossword to and picked up some books. The only sore point was that we couldn’t get a cup of hot coffee. Bad luck. Of the three books we picked up, one book caught my attention - The Pregnant King.

Mahabharatha and Ramayana are my favourite epics. I particularly remember Mahabharatha quite well. This is where the story of Yuvanshva caught my attention as I never came across this character in Mahabharatha. To my delight I found this was the work of the author — a fictional story.

The Pregnant King

Publisher: Penguin Books India
Author: Devdutt Pattanaik
Published in: February 2008
Price: Rs. 295
Classification: Fiction

Verdict: Interesting Read

Description:

Author Devdutt Pattanaik takes the liberty of using his imaganation and inspiration from folklores to sketch an impressive story. This is the story of a King who becomes a mother to become a father to become a king. A story of Vallabhi, a kingdom which yearns for the rightful king who never comes.

Set during the time of the Kurukshetra war, the story unfolds the desires and egos of the inhabitants of the royal palace of Vallabhi. It starts with the crowning of the new King of Vallabhi — Shilavati the widow queen (as a regent) as she carries the heir (Yuvanshva) to the kingdom in her womb. Then the struggle of Shilavati, a woman with the head of a king, to hand over the power to her childless son who has three wives. The son for whom things go awry. There is also the brahman couple who return as brahma rakshasas to seek revenge on him.

In brief the story is of Yuvanshva’s many questions for which he seeks answers. About his failure to produce children even with three wives, why his mother doesn’t crown him the king and finally the question of whether is a mother or a father.

And there are other characters like his son who finds the story behind his birth unbelievable. The second queen who rejects Yuvanshva as a husband. Arjuna and his story of how he felt being like a woman. The ugly-looking yaksha, Sthunakarna who spends his life as a woman and a man helping characters like Shikandi and Somvat. The book ends with Yuvanshva finding the reasons for his confusing existence and events that happened in his life. Overall a good book to read once.

And do head to Goodreads. This is yet another online service that helps us see what our friends are reading. We can also keep track of books read and organize them into shelves.

It has been a strange and tiring week. For the first time I have been troubled by a rather strange and persistent cough and cold that are relentlessly trying to get me down for the past two weeks. Strange, as I recover quite quickly. My doctor informs that this is due to some new bacteria or virus and people say this is due to global warming (I do not know why they choose global warming!). Interestingly scientists are using cow dung to know the changes in climatic patterns.

Strange as it seems, we did get to see some unexpected rainfall in February in on two days in the last week. The already overflowing traffic in Hyderabad choked at every nook and corner on two days when it rained. A few centimetres of rain showed what it could do to a fast growing city like Hyderabad if the necessary infrastructure is not put in place. It is high time that the government and citizens understand the need for robust draining facilities and some much needed traffic sense.

And while the stock markets in India keep playing the game of rise and fall, a prominent politician Rajnath Singh of the BJP feels that Terrorists have something to do with this. Supporting his views are that FII’s have close ot 40% of the investments in India and also Mr. M K Narayanan the National Security Advisory who expressed his apprehensions one year ago that Terrorists might use the FII route to manipulate the stock markets. Well this was a different take all together on the Indian stock markets that have been quite volatile in the last few weeks. We have already seen two major IPOs being withdrawn and share prices of Reliance Power tumbling with some heavy selling on its counter.

Down Under in Adeliade Oval, India missed another wonderful opportunity to place itself in a strong position in the 7th ODI of the ongoing Commonwealth Bank 2007-08 triseries. Bowling out the world champions for a measly 203 India failed to capitalise on the advantage and lost to Australia by 50 runs. The young Indian brigade did put up a decent show but that was not enough to defeat the unrelenting Australians

On anther note Pepsi feels that the youngsters of the present Inidan Cricket team can give more to its brand. With a host of options to choose from, it has replaced Ganguly and Dravid in favour of the young and upcoming Ishant and Rohit Sharma for its new ad campaign “Yeh hai Youngistaan Meri Jaan“. The new ad campaign intends to ride on the promise and appeal of the young Indian cricket and film stars to position itself as a youth brand to garner a good market share in India. I am sure this saves them some money. Pepsi can save some money on the sharmas.

I often look foward to weekends to catch up on reading books. But with my health not co-operating, I have been unable to make any progress in the last week. The Lazybug also has been struggling a bit but at least is making some progress - some Conventional Wisdom here. The list of books that I have to finish has been slowly growing, something which I dislike.

• Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann
• Unrational Leadership by Charles Fleetham
• The Fifth Discipline by Peter M Senge
• Inevitable Ilusions by Piatelli Palmarini
  
• Being Indian by Pavan K Varma
• The Dogs of Justice by Nina Sibal

Finishing them off will add to my list of books I have read and bring me close to the half century mark (My current count of books I have read stands at 43).

All in all this was a strange week for me and I was really feeling it. With some signs of me recovering soon and hopes of finishing my personal and official assignments well within time I look forward to a great week and also the marriage of my close friend the next sunday.

Reading is something I have been loving from my childhood. I used to read anything and everything that I could find. Starting with the usual self motivation books I slowly graduated to books on management and now to books on a variety of topics.

I was quite lucky that where ever I went books were in abundance. My school, college and my first employer probably had the biggest collection of books. As luck would have it and to my liking, the first job I had required me to read a lot.

I am just trying to recollect how many books I might have read by now. Hopefully, I can also include a brief about them sometime soon. So here I go:

1. Priceless by Diana Lasalle
2. Made In Japan by Akio Morita
3. The Bombardier Story by Larry Macdonald
4. The Art of Deception by Kevin D. Hitnick
5. What Clients Love by Harry Beckwith
6. How Customers Think by Gerald Zaltman
7. Use What You’ve Got & Other Business Lessons by Barbara Corcoran
8. The End of Detroit by Micheline Maynard
9. John Chambers And The Cisco Way by John K Waters
10. The Maverick And His Machine by Thomas Watson
11. How To Influence People And Win Friends by Dale Carneige
12. Count Your Chickens by Arindham Chaudhari
13. The Magic of Thinking Big by David J Schwartz
14. The Art of War by Tsu Zau
15. Icon Steve Jobs by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon
16. Iaccoca by Lee Iacocca and William Novak
17. Inscrutable Americans by Anurag Mathur
18. Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat
19. It Happened In India by Kishore Biyani
20. The Google Story by David Vise and Mark Malseed
21. Lexus The Relentless Pursuit by Chester Dawson
22. The Road Ahead by Bill Gates
23. K.mart’s 10 Deadly Sins by Marcia Layton Turner
24. Fish by Stephen C. Lundin
25. The Crow Chronicles by Ranjit Lal
26. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
27. Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
28. Congo by Michael Chrichton
29. Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda
30. The Fisherman and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
    
31. How to Sell Anything to Anybody by Joe Girard
32. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
33. Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
34. The Godfather by Mario Puzo
35. The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien
    
36. The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma
37. Black Friday by S Hussain Zaidi
    
38. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J K Rowling
39. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J K Rowling
40. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J K Rowling
41. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J K Rowling
42. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J K Rowling
43. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J K Rowling

List to be updated …