yes, there is a hope...

The Panama Papers: The untold India story of the trailblazing global offshore investigation                                      Authors: Ritu Sarin, Jay Mazoomdaar and P. Vaidyanathan Iyer                                     Publisher: Penguin Random House  2019  The book revolves around the leaks of the financial and legal documents of Panamanian law firm "Mossack Fonseca"  by ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists)    ICIJ took up many projects to leak and investigate the few cases involving public interest like Paradise Papers, Panama papers, Swiss leaks, Luxembourg leaks etc which are related to public policy and shaped discourses in public life revolving around misuse of legal and regulatory framework in different count...

                Every book gives you some new insight, a new thought process or a point to ponder. That is why books are considered as guiding light leading us to new doors of knowledge world. So, when I picked Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer by Cyrus Mistry published by Aleph Book Company , I wasn’t aware of the content of the book but for the name. Few months passed by before the lockdown made me to pick up this beauty and reveal the mastery of words by Mistry.                  The book is a combination of biographical account and fiction simultaneously of a secluded world on which very few literary works exist. It tells a tale of very small yet significant sub-caste of Parsi Corpse bearers called as Khandhias and Nussesalars. Parsis' who follow Zoroastrian religion are small close knit community mostly in Bombay and Gujarat and have unique way to dispose of the dead i.e. b...

This blog post comes after a very long time. I may offer countless reasons for the same but none will be justified now because the lockdown has given ample time for introspection that nothing was or is unavoidable and no work was so urgent that I could have skipped my occasional blog post. If not any gyan or random topic I could have easily put in my book reviews which are though dwindling in number. So, the first book I completed in the lockdown was “An Area of Darkness” by Sir Vidiya S. Naipaul published in 1964. I must say that it was my bad luck that I never got opportunity to read V.S. Naipaul due to my myopic vision as I was engrossed with either UPSC CSE related books, investigative journalism or spirituality-oriented topics. This was a random and not a deliberate choice and I must accept that random choice was rewarding and more so like my pet line “Whatever happens, happens for good” and I promise that I’ll be picking more Naipaul’s from the shelves afterwards and...

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF REMEMBERING EVERYTHING MOONWALKING with EINSTEIN by JOSHUA FOER       Set up in the background of History of Memory and the  author's  journey for participating in U.S. Memory Championship, the book caught my attention when I was going through some Goodread suggestions, the name of the book and brief description caught my attention.           Basically, I will be discussing the chapter wise analysis because that is better to give an overview. The book contains eleven chapters of different themes related to memory and contains observations of writer Joshua Foer. However, the title is misnomer as it has to do nothing with either Einstein or Moonwalking. Before the start of chapter 1, Joshua shares one small story, which I am sharing below: " There were no other survivors.        Family members arriving at the scene of the fifth-century-B.C. banquet hall catastrophe pawed at ...

Justice: What’s the right thing to do? Frankly, I wanted to read this book from 2013. I have heard about this book while preparing for CSE exams but never managed to do so. The sudden desire at that time was due to an interview of the author Michael Sandel which was published in The Economic Times  then and some of the thoughts in the discussion by expressed by Sandel were really fresh. So, having gifted the book to myself this new year, it took really long time to finish it and compose the blog. The book as the title suggests in discussion on the certain notions which are often discussed in polity and public life and society at large like Justice, Values, Ethics. The first chapter “ Doing The Right Thing ” discusses the dilemma faced by people while deciding the situations. Here, Sandel by citing   various situations like market greed at the time of crisis like hurricanes and how businesses behave. His insistence that government should stay away...