Hi! A real short travel (though account is not so brief) is the first post this year. Here's the link. BENARES

Mixture as Before Somerset Maugham was acutely mindful of the criticism his books received. Luke warm review of his short-story collection Cosmopolitan was published in Times under the title ‘The Mixture as Before’. He promptly adopted this as the title of his next short-story collection. Maugham, a hugely popular writer, could use this mildly disparaging term to highlight the variety in his collection. I shamelessly borrow these words, but only to apologise for the unvarying cocktail of books I have brought to your notice in all these weeks. My only excuse, ill-founded perhaps, is that these are the books I like and read. Consequently, I can write honestly only on them. Need for free thought and fearless debate in human society is eternal. But it was never felt so deeply as in present times. I bring to your notice a collection of brilliant essays by Ramachandra Guha titled Democrats andDissenters . Kashmir has been in news for long, it seems for ever. I was always awa...

*** 1/2 /*****                                                                                                                                      Essay/Anthology Democrats and Dissenters Ramachandra Guha Ramachandra Guha trained as a sociologist, but is known mostly as a historian amongst readers. His most popular book till ...

***/*****                                                                                                                                                           History   War and Diplomacy in Kashmir-1947-1948 C Dasgupt...

****/*****                                                                                                                              Novel The Quiet American Graham Greene             Story is set in Saigon, Vietnam of early 1950s. Thomas Fowler, middle aged (whose paunch has begun to make buttoning of his tr...

*** 1/2 /*****                                                                                                                                                      Travel The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island Bill Bryson Abou...

**1/2/*****                                                                                                                                                      Science Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice To All Creation-The Definitive Guide To The Evolutionary Biol...

Hi! I bring few reviews again. I offered my opinion on Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained in the last post. Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion   though on religion, is not in the same vein. This is an erudite, yet, a searing attack on Religion and concept of God. I read the book many years back. I  had dabbled with the question of God for some years and read about atheism desultorily. I did not know that such unassailable arguments existed on atheism. I had never come across a book on ‘lack of faith’. The book blew my mind. For months I walked in seventh heaven. Secret of life had been revealed to me. Bibliography provided me reference to many other works and over the years I read some beautiful books on the subject. God Delusion has been on the ‘best-seller’ list for long and many of you must have read it. It is criticised for its trenchant, polemical prose. I think religious propaganda- as is plainly evident in the country today- is so blatantly wrong, harmful and preposte...

****/*****                                                                                                                                                        God/Religion The God Delusion Richard Dawkins     ...

*** 1/2 /*****                                                                                                    History Integration of the Indian States V. P. Menon India as one Nation, as we know it today, is a recent event. In its more than three millennia history, India never existed as one country under one supreme power. For short periods, under Ashoka, Akbar, and Aurangzeb large swathes of territory did come under the suzerainty of an emperor, but there was no political unity among var...

*** 1/2 /*****                                                                                                    Science From Eternity to here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time Sean Carroll Time has baffled philosophers, scientists, and the masses since the dawn of thought. It is impossible to imagine a world without time and it is equally difficult to accept time just as another dimension of our universe. Our existence and even the infinite universe with its billions of stars seems ...

***/*****                                                                                                        Memoir All Creatures Great and Small James Herriot             James Herriot, soon after graduating as a veterinary doctor, joined the practice of Siegfried Farmon, a village veterinarian, as his assistant in the hilly county of Yorkshire Dales in late 1930s. These are memoirs of his initial years in practice...

How time passes! The phrase is so banal that even the news of latest Brexit maneuver feels stimulating. Though a bit shop-worn, it does state pithily, our bafflement with one of the ubiquitous physical entities in our lives. Time is understood little even by physicists. What constitutes the arrow of time, none knows. It would seem that past, present, and future are mere constructs of the human mind. In the space-time matrix of universe, all events are etched indelibly. Future of humanity on Earth may be the past of a planet travelling at vastly different speeds. Construct or real, physicist or layperson;  notwithstanding these quibbles, human mind knows what is passage of time. We remember our past, not our future. We hanker after past joys ruefully and fret over the unknown vicissitudes future may bring. It's been a year since I came to the city. How time- No, I won't repeat it. Ethologists, evolutionary psychologists and biologists tell me that we have inherite...

Treadmill, Coffee, Books and OT OT starts late here but I wake up at the usual hour. I have time for more workout in the morning. It’s still dark outside as I pound the treadmill. Initially with trepidation lest I wake up the family members who sleep in adjoining rooms. Then a little more confidently, as heart beats faster and its rhythm mingles with the music. After the run, I have more than an hour on my hands. I read the stuff I wrote last night or type it out. I brew coffee to take to work. I can’t resist pouring a little, to sip now, though I have had tea a few minutes back. I gather my books, lunch box and coffee flask. I stuff the pannier bag of my cycle with these. Bag balloons enormously, on either side of the carrier. Cycle resembles a slim woman in a corset with ballooning middle. I check again if I have kept the book I am presently reading. I can’t survive without it for 8 hours in OT. City is waking up as I cycle the short distance to the hospital. There are a ...