Out this December - "The Style Diary of a Bollywood Diva" by Kareena Kapoor [Penguin Books India]

Even Kareena Kapoor is supposedly writing books now! 

                               

And being published by the publishing house that comes out with Pamuk, Ruskin Bond, Sudha Murty, Omair Ahmad et cetera. I guess when you have money, getiing freelance writers to compose even as much as a book and calling it your own is only a matter of time.. But really, what a waste of paper.. pages and pages of bullsh*t.. Pity the people who plan to buy the book..

 The thing is, I guess, that whichever topic a book by Kareena Kapoor would be on, it would no doubt be originally written by someone else. Now, if the topic is something that is even remotely non-trivial, she won't have anything to say when asked about her book, because of course someone like her has not the slightest intelligence, interest or knowledge about it. On the other hand, if the book is about 'style', she could mouth replies to the press, regardless of whoever has written the book.. At the end of the day, though, it's all a piece of cr*p.

"You might be a Zombie and other bad news"!

THE dedication..

and an excerpt of a particularly interesting part..

FIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS THAT PROVE HUMANITY IS DOOMED

YOU have to be careful when you go poking around the human mind, because you can’t be sure what you’ll find there. A number of psychological experiments over the years have yielded terrifying conclusions, not about the occasional psychopath, but about you.

5. THE GOOD SAMARITAN EXPERIMENT (1973)

The setup

 Naming their study after the biblical story in which a Samaritan helps an enemy in need, psychologists John Darley and C. Daniel Batson wanted to test if religion has any effect on helpful behavior. So they gathered a group of seminary students and asked half of them to deliver a sermon about the Good Samaritan in another building. The other half were told to give a speech about job opportunities, and members of both groups were given varying amounts of time to prepare and get

across campus to deliver their sermons, ensuring some students were in more of a hurry when heading to deliver the good news. On the way to give their speech, the subjects would pass a person slumped in an alleyway, who looked to be in need of help.

The people who had been studying the Good Samaritan story did not stop any more often than the ones preparing a speech on job opportunities. The only factor that made a difference was how much of a hurry the students were in.

If pressed for time, only 10 percent would stop to give any aid, even when they were on their way to give a sermon about how awesome it is to stop and give aid.

What this says about you

As much as we like to make fun of anti-gay congressmen who get caught gaying it up in a men’s bathroom, the truth is that we’re just as likely to be hypocrites. After all, it’s much easier to talk to a room full of people about helping strangers than, say, to actually touch a bleeding homeless man.

And in case you thought these results were restricted to seminary students, in 2004 a BBC article reported on some disturbing footage captured by the camera of a parked public bus. In the tape, an injured twenty-five-year-old woman lies bleeding profusely in a London road, while dozens of passing motorists swerve to avoid her, without stopping. To be fair, the report doesn’t mention if there was anything good on TV that night, so they might have had somewhere really important to be.

4. THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT (1971)

The setup

You may have heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment, in which psychologist Philip Zimbardo transformed the Stanford Psychology Department’s basement into a mock prison. But you probably didn’t know just how ashamed it should make you to be a human being.

Seventy young men responded to a newspaper ad soliciting volunteers for an experiment. Zimbardo then gave each volunteer a test to evaluate their health and mental stability, and divided the most stable men arbitrarily into twelve guards and twelve prisoners. Zimbardo wanted to test how captivity affects subjects put in positions of authority and submission. The simulation was planned to run for two weeks.

The result

It took less than one day for every subject to go crazier than a shit-house rat. On day two, prisoners staged a riot and barricaded their cells with their beds. The guards saw this as a pretty good excuse to start squirting fire extinguishers at the insurgents because, hey, why not? The Stanford prison continued to ricochet around in hell for a while. Guards began forcing inmates to sleep naked on the concrete, restricting bathroom use, making prisoners do humiliating exercises and clean toilets with their bare hands. Incredibly, it never occurred to participants to simply ask to be let out of the damned experiment, even though they had absolutely no legal reason to be imprisoned.

Over fifty outsiders stopped to observe the simulation, but the morality of the trial was never questioned until Zimbardo’s girlfriend, Christina Maslach, strongly objected. After six days, Zimbardo put a halt to the experiment.

What this says about you

Ever been harassed by a cop who acted like a complete douche bag for no reason? The Stanford Prison Experiment indicates that if the roles were reversed, you’d likely act the same way.

As it turns out, it’s usually fear of repercussion that keeps us from torturing our fellow human beings. Give us absolute power and a blank check from our superiors, and Abu Ghraib- style naked pyramids are sure to follow. If it can happen to the sanest 35 percent of a group of hippie college students, it sure as hell could happen to you.

3. BYSTANDER APATHY EXPERIMENT (1968)

The setup

When a woman was murdered in 1964, the New York Times reported that thirty-eight people had heard or seen the attack but did nothing. John Darley and Bibb Latane wanted to know if the fact that these people were in a large group played any role in the reluctance to come to the victim’s aid.

The psychologists invited a group of volunteers to an “extremely personal” discussion and separated them into different rooms with intercoms, purportedly to protect anonymity.

During the conversation, one of the members would fake an epileptic seizure. We’re not sure how they conveyed, via intercom, that what was happening was a seizure, but we’re assuming the words, “Wow this is quite an epileptic seizure I’m having,” were uttered.

The result

When subjects believed that they were the only other person in the discussion, 85 percent were heroic enough to leave the room and seek help once the seizure started. This makes sense. Having an extremely personal conversation is difficult enough, but being forced to continue to carry on the conversation alone is just sad.

However, when the experiment was altered so that subjects believed four other people were in the discussion, only 31 percent went to look for help once the seizure began. The rest assumed someone else would take care of it.

What this says about you

Obviously if there’s an emergency and you’re the only one around, the pressure to help increases massively since you feel 100 percent responsible. But when you’re with ten other people, you feel approximately 10 percent as responsible. Problem: so does everybody else.

This sheds some light on our previous examples. Maybe the drivers who swerved around the injured woman in the road would have stopped if they’d been alone on a deserted highway. Then again, maybe they’d be even more likely to abandon her since nobody was watching.

We just need the slightest excuse to do nothing.

2. THE ASCH CONFORMITY EXPERIMENT (1953)

The setup

Solomon Asch wanted to run studies to document the power of conformity, for the purpose of depressing everyone who would ever read the results. Subjects were told they’d be taking part in a vision test. They were shown a line, and then several lines of varying sizes to the right of the first line. All they had to do was say which line on the right matched the original. The answer was objectively obvious.

                The catch was that everybody in the room other than one subject had been instructed to give the same obviously wrong answer. Would the subject go against the crowd when the

crowd was clearly wrong?

The result

If three others in the classroom gave the same wrong answer, even when the line was plainly off by several inches, one in three subjects would follow the group right off the proverbial cliff.

               

What this says about you

Imagine how much that figure inflates when the answers are less black and white. We all laugh with the group even when we don’t get the joke or doubt our opinion when we realize it’s unpopular.

“Well, it’s a good thing I’m a rebellious nonconformist,” you might say. Of course, once you

decide to be a nonconformist the next step is to find out what the other nonconformists are doing and make sure you’re nonconforming correctly.

                1. MILGRAM (1961) AND MILGRAM 2 (1972): ELECTRICBOOGALOO

The setup

At the Nuremberg trials, many of the Nazis tried to excuse their behavior by claiming they were just following orders. So in 1961, Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted the infamous Milgram Experiment, testing subjects’ willingness to obey an authority figure.

Each subject was told they were a “teacher” and that their job was to give a memory test to a man (actually an actor) located in another room. Subjects were told that whenever the other guy gave an incorrect answer, they were to press a button that would give him an electric shock.

As far as the subjects knew, the shocks were real, starting at 45 volts and increasing with every wrong answer. Each time they pushed the button, the actor would scream and beg for the subject to stop.

The result

Many subjects began to feel uncomfortable after a certain point and questioned continuing the experiment. However, each time a guy in a lab coat encouraged them to continue, most subjects followed orders, delivering shocks of higher and higher voltage despite the victims’ screams.

Eventually, the actor would start banging on the wall that separated him from the subject, pleading about his heart condition. After further shocks, all sounds from the victim’s room would cease, indicating he was dead or unconscious. Take a guess, what percentage of the subjects kept delivering shocks after that point?

Between 61 and 66 percent of subjects continued the experiment until it reached the maximum voltage of 450, continuing to deliver shocks after the victim had, for all they knew, been zapped into unconsciousness or the afterlife.

Most subjects wouldn’t begin to object until after 300-volt shocks. Exactly zero asked to stop the experiment before that point (pro tip in case you’re ever faced with a similar dilemma: Under the right circumstances 110-230 volts is enough to kill a man).

                The Milgram Experiment immediately became famous for what it implied about humanity’s capacity for evil. But by 1972, some of his colleagues decided that Milgram’s subjects must have known the actor was faking. In an attempt to disprove his findings, Charles Sheridan and Richard King took the experiment a step further, asking subjects to shock a puppy every time it disobeyed an order. Unlike Milgram’s experiment, this shock was real. Exactly twenty out of twenty-six subjects went to the highest voltage.

What this says about you

Almost 80 percent. Think about that when you’re at the mall: Eight out of ten of the people you see would torture the shit out of a puppy if a dude in a lab coat asked them to. And there’s a good chance you would too.

Yeah, well.. I really like it, so..

Sputnik Sweetheart: a review

"So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us - that's snatched right out of our hands - even if we are left completely changed people with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw nearer to our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness." Taken from the book itself, Murakami's 'Sputnik Sweetheart' is a brilliant mix of the abstract, the reality and everything in between. An unputdownable, and a must read.

And what an ending. "The blood must have already, in its own silent way, seeped inside."

Got a taste of the infamous Mumbai rains I've been hearing so much about. Incessant rain, train service disrupted & co-operative housing society waterlogged (upto the knees). The first memory that came to mind was that of College Street after a particularly persistent spell of rain. However, what with the formal black boots and all, it felt more like coming home from school on one of those rainy days, when the water got inside my shoes and it felt like I was carrying around s sea in each of them..

GORDON – “I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss...”

Blake pulls out his badge. Throws it into the river.

GORDON (V.O.) – “I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy…I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done...”

Gordon closes the book, looking down at Bruce Wayne’s grave.

“It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known..”

Because he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he's not our hero.. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight..

BRUCE WAYNE - Where am I?

BANE - Home..

Wayne’s eyes dart about: filthy stone walls, distant sunlight from above, iron bars: an underground prison.

BANE - .. where I learned the truth about despair. As will you. (Rises.) There is a reason that this prison is the worst hell on earth... (Bane steps to the bars - looks up at a bright opening five hundred feet above. Like being at the bottom of a gigantic well...) Hope. Every man who has rotted here over the centuries has looked up to the light and imagined climbing to freedom. So simple. So easy. And, like shipwrecked men turning to sea water from uncontrollable thirst, many have died trying. I learned that there can be no true despair without hope. (Turns to Wayne.) So as I terrorize Gotham, I will feed its people hope to poison their souls. I will let them believe they can survive so that you can watch them clamber over each other to stay in the sun... (Bane points to an old TV, just outside the bars.) You will watch as I torture an entire city to cause you pain you thought you could never feel again. Then, when you have truly understood the depths of your failure, we will fulfill R¯a’s al Gh¯ul’s destiny. We will destroy Gotham. And when it is done...when Gotham is ashes...then you have my permission to die.

One of my most favourite poems..

Every time I read the last two lines - "Shob paakhi ghore aashe - shob nodi.. phuroy a jeebon-er shob lyendyen; / Thaake shudhu ondhokaar, mukhomukhi boshibaar.. Bonolota Sen.."('When all the birds return home, all rivers too.. when this life and all its give-and-take comes to a stop.. / It's only darkness that remains.. and in that darkness, we sit facing each other, Bonolota Sen..", I can feel the goosebumps on my arms.. How can two mere sentences be so haunting, so beautifully tragic? Interpret it as you may - the lover's promise to stand by his lady for all his mortal life and beyond, or the philosopher's eulogy on the inevitability of Death and the romanticism arising thereof - these eighteen lines are otherworldly..

They say there are always people you care about; you just don’t realize how much until they’re gone. Actually, I think you start realizing it the moment it becomes inevitable that they’ll go away, sooner rather than later. However much your stubbornness wants you to believe that it won’t really matter that much, that noone’s indispensable, that the person’s going away was always meant to be, there is a voice at the back of your mind, deep in the realms of your heart, that will know..that will always know exactly how passionately you care, that will always remind you exactly how acutely you’re going to miss the person…

"You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking, 'Oh, this is Kant,' or 'Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire, they're nothing but scraps of paper. It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction—they're all just fuel."

~ Haruki Murakami, "After Dark"

Live.. and let live...

Because the world is just as much theirs as it is ours..
 
                        

"I had absolutely no idea about the country America; I had never been there. I was certainly not of a later generation of my cousins, such as Sameer, who at the age of sixteen stepped into JFK Airport fresh off the plane from Bombay wearing a Mets baseball cap and with half an American accent already in place. I traveled, in twenty-four hours, between childhood and adulthood, between innocence and knowledge, between predestination and chaos. Everything that has happened since, every minute and monstrous act—the way I use a fork, the way I make love, my choice of a profession and a wife—has been shaped by that central event, that fulcrum of time."

Beginning to feel I might like this book.. A lot.

Book Review: "Mockingjay", by Suzanne Collins

"I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despise being one myself. I think that Peeta was onto something about us destroying one another and lettng some decent species take over. Because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences. You can spin it any way you like. Snow thought the Hunger Games were an efficient means of control. Coin thought the parachutes would expedite the war. But in the end, who does it benefit? No one. The truth is, it benefits no one to live in a world where these things happen."

This paragraph sums up 'The Hunger Games' (and its fallout) so beautifully, that it almost takes your breath away. Essentially, it's not anything new that Collins tells us - this thing that the world is like a venomous snake that has bitten into its own tail and refuses to let go - but the way she goes about in her narration.. Mostly lucid, and almost always sticking to a central theme.

"We learn to keep busy again. Peeta bakes. I hunt. Haymitch drinks until the liquor runs out, and then raises geese until the next train arrives. Fortunately, the geese can take pretty good care of themselves. We’re not alone. A few hundred others return because, whatever has happened, this is our home. With the mines closed, they plow the ashes into the earth and plant food. Machines from the Capitol break ground for a new factory where we will make medicines. Although no one seeds it, the Meadow turns green again." - the peace, or whatever it amounted too, was needed. Really needed. Like air. The way Collins brings it to the characters is well-planned. Perhaps a little obvious, yes, but still well portrayed.


"My children, who don’t know they play on a graveyard." - the war may be over, but the repercussions will always be there and thereabouts.. This line was particularly brilliant, I thought.. Respect.

A fitting end to a masterfully scripted trilogy. Yes, the pace appears to be a little forced at places, but then the first two were so good that Collins was facing very tough competition from herself.. That she did such a commendable job is what really carries the day.

p.s. And it had to be Peeta. "Always.."