Two decades back, an art dealer approached the Getty Museum in California and told that he possessed a Greek marble statue dating from the sixth century BC. A geologist from the University of California was asked to examine the statue and after about fourteen months of investigation, the museum agreed to buy the statue. A few months later the museum invited a former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to take a look at the piece and the word that popped into the Director’s mind when he saw the statue was “fresh”. He was sure that something was not right. The Museum took the statue to Greece and the consensus among experts was that the statue was fake. The Director was able to make that call in a few seconds of seeing the statue, in the blink of an eye.
Whenever we meet someone new, in the first few seconds we form an opinion of that person and usually stick to it. Strangely that opinion is often consistent with an opinion formed after lot of thought. For verifying this psychologist Nalini Ambady gave showed some students video clips of teachers, lasting ten seconds with the sound turned off. The results were consistent with the opinion of students who took the course for a full term. This book by Malcolm Gladwell deals with thosesnap judgments and the process behind them.
We are able to form quick judgments due to a process called “Thin Slicing”, which is the ability of our subconscious mind to find patterns in situations and behavior based on narrow slices of experience. This is apowerful force within us and is behind many of our impulsive decisions. While this unconscious force is very powerful, it can make mistakes, especially while operating under pressure.
That is what happened during the shooting of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx by four police officers. Diallo was standing outside his apartment at midnight taking in air, when a patrol car got suspicious and pulled aside. Two officers wanted to speak with him, but Diallo got scared and started to run. At the same time, he wastrying to pull something from his pocket. One of the cops saw it in a flash as a gun and as trained shot Diallo. The other officers joined to protect their partner. Forty-onebullets and Diallo was dead. The object he was trying to pull from his pocket was his wallet and not a gun. All this happened in seven seconds.
Under pressure and fear, the snap judgment of the officers failed. The motor skills broke down and certain portions of the brain stopped functioning. Vision became restricted and behavior turned aggressive. Such temporary autistic situations that happen in life-threatening situations can cause lot of harm.
But with proper training, you can master the art of making correct snap judgments. One such person is psychologist John Gottman who canpredict with great accuracy if a marriage will last based on observing a video tape of a couple in conversation. He does this by assigning code numbers to each emotion the couple displays during the conversation; a code number for each second of the tape. Then based on the final number, he can make a successful prediction. Later he found that there are specific emotions (of which contempt is the top) that can give a good indication on the longevity of the marriage. Now Gottman can eavesdropa conversation and make his prediction by looking for those specific emotions.
Similarly when Brendan Reilley took over the Cook County Emergency Room in Chicago, the hospital was short on funds and had to treat a large number of patients with critical needs. Since there were only few beds, he had to decide fast if patient who came in with chest pain had to be admitted or not for hear attack. Analyzing apatient history took time. So Reilley turned his attention towards the work of a mathematician called Lee Goldman who devised a simple algorithm for taking the guessworkout of treating chest pain. By asking a few specific questions, doctors could make a quick call and make the correct decision. For making that decision, they did not need too much information, but less.
Combining various experiments in psychology and neuroscience, and combining evidence from fields as diverse as advertising to war games this book presents a fascinating view of how the brain works when it makes quick decisions. This science is presented with enough anecdotes that there is never a dull moment. Sometimes there are too many stories that you get caught up in them rather than the science behind it. But on the whole this is a very intriguing book and is worth reading.

There have been movies on the Dalai Lama (Kundun, Seven Years in Tibet), but only documentaries about Buddha (Life of Buddha). The only movie in which I have seen Buddha is Siddhartha, but he had a cameo appearance.
Now Shekhar Kapur (who by the way has a blog) is planning a movie on the life of Buddha and it has controversy written all over it.

Shekhar Kapur’s much-hyped and yet-to-be-shot movie Buddha would not shy away from showing incidents from the life of the founder of Buddhism who also had his ‘fair share of pleasures’ before attaining enlightenment.
Producers of the movie MCorp Global have made it clear that like any other Shekhar Kapur movie, Buddha would be based on the real life story of Siddharth, the prince who bathed in all the pleasures that man could ever dream of and Buddha, the enlightened, who experienced pains that no one could ever dream of.
Asked if Buddhists would not be offended with the depiction, Modi said “Buddhism is the only religious philosophy not based on god. It is based on a level of spirituality not relating to god alone. Buddha was a prince enjoying the best of royal luxury, he was married and had a son. All these are established facts.”[Shekhar Kapur to portray the Buddha as human]

The producers expect that the movie might be banned in some countries for portraying the ‘fair share of pleasure’ scenes. Buddha was a human who preached a technique for achieving nirvana without divine intervention, but his disciples found it necessary to worship him as God. None of those people would like to see Siddhartha making love or enjoying a drink with some courtesans.
Buddha asked his disciples not to worship his image, but spend time practicing his teachings. Hence early disciples used to represent Buddha with icons like foot print, dharma wheel or the lotus flower. Later they started making statues and found that lighting agarbattis in front of it was easier than doing a ten day vipassana course. For those people, this movie might be offensive.
Since Buddhists are generally pacifists, we may not see any fatwas or heads literally rolling with the release of the movie sometime in 2007.

Looks like that opening Rediff had for fact checkers has not been filled yet. Today, while reporting on Adoor Gopalakrishnan being awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke award, Rediff Entertainment Bureau wrote

A three-time National Award winner and a Padma Shri, some of Adoor’s most famous films include Swayamvaram, Chemmeen, Elipathayam and Nizhalkuthu.[Phalke award for Adoor]

Chemmeen, based on a novel by Thakazhi Shivashankara Pillai was made by Ramu Kariat. The film had an Adoor connection, but it was the actress Adoor Bhavani.

Lankaparvam by T. Damu, DC Books, 50 pages.

Recently the Malayalam book Lankaparvam was in the news for making the claim that Thiyyas were from Kyrgyzstan. Fascinated by this fact, I managed to get this book which is about the history of Sri Lanka.
The author of the book is T. Damu, who has published many novels, short stories and articles under the pen name T. D. Vadakkumbad. He has also worked as newspaper reporter and associate editor for various newspapers in India. Currently he is an officer in a big unnamed company, and it was on a business trip that he reached Sri Lanka.
The book consists of a total of 48 pages of which seven are color photographs, and can be finished within the commercial break time of That 70s Show. As the author starts on his flight from Thiruvanathapuram, he is reminded of the Hanuman’s flight to the prosperous Lanka of Ravana and this Ramayana theme runs throughout the book as the author travels to places like Seetha Eliya, which has the only temple dedicated to Seetha.
The book also talks about the origin of the SriLankan people from a princess in Bengal, moves to the arrival of Buddhism, talks about the origin of Nairs and Ezhavas, and skips directly to the LTTE, all within about thirty pages. Even though the chapters seem to suggest historical progression, most of the contents are mythological stories. The author takes them seriously and presents them as facts even without expressing a bit of doubt.
So when he suggests that in a place called Nuvara Eliya, the soil is black in color because Ravanas palace was burned down by Hanuman here or that the presence of Asoka trees in some area suggests that Seetha was held by Ravana there, you know these are without any basis. Such stories are prevalent all around India too and you have to accept them for what they are — legends.
The author says that Thiyyas are different from Ezhavas and for this he cites two stories. The first one says that that Lord Siva saw seven women taking a bath in a river and decided to get them. For this he made the place cold and convertedhimself to fire and when the women came to warm themselves near the fire, he gotall of them. The children born of that relationship are called Thiyyas since they were born from Thee (fire in Malayalam). The second story says that Lord Shiva wanted to booze and for getting someone to climb the coconut tree to get toddy, he created Thiyyas.
Once these, Intelligent Design, equivalent theories have been presented, the author kicks it up a notch and suggests that some people migrated from Kyrgyzstan in 7000 B.C to India. Since they were from Thiyyan mountain area (Tien Shan), they were called Thiyyas. According to him an ancient book from Finland called the Edda has a mention of Thiyyas, so it could be that Thiyyas were from Finland also.
This book does not provide a single reference for this theory or any research which confirms this theory. There is a Salem in Massachussets and does not mean that people living there are from Salem, Tamil Nadu. If you look at the world map, you can spot places and races many such similarities, but similarity in names is not sufficient to prove such migration theories. Who knows what Thiyya in Finnish means?
All these doubts did not prevent The Hindu from writing this, “The predominant Thiyya community of Malabar migrated to Kerala in 7000 BC from Kyrgyzstan in the erstwhile Soviet Union, says a fresh study revealing their disputed origins”.After reading the book, I found there was no study mentioned. It was just a casual statement in the middle of a bunch of mythologies.
For all you know, Thiyyas might be from Kyrgyzstan. But unfortunately the context in which this information is presented and the lack of any reference makes me a skeptic.

Other marquee names expected to perform at Netru Indru Naalai 2005 are actors Kamal Hassan, Abhishek Bachchan and Madhavan, and a whole lot of other stars. The technical team behind the event include Mani Ratnam’s wife and ace director in her own right, Revathy, director Vasanth and choreographers Brinda and Kala, among others.[Mani Ratnam to direct Star Vijay’s extravaganza]

Rediff Entertainment Bureau has immediate opening for fact checkers.
Update: Rediff has updated the article with the correct name.

Thanks to Surya for tagging me. This is part of the meme that is bouncing in the Indian Blogosphere.
Total number of books I own:I don’t own lot of books. Right now the count will be less than 100. All the places I have lived had excellent libraries and I prefer borrowing.
Last book I bought: In Search of the Cradle of Civilization: New Light on Ancient India. After reading the columns of Subhash Kak in Sulekha, I had to get this book which offers revisions of Indian history by citing the latest archaeological, geological and linguistic evidence. This book demolishes the Aryan Invasion Theory convincingly.
Last book I read: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman. After being impressed with his columns and two of his books, I was a bit disappointed with this one. This book is full of praise for India, but is preachy and full of irritating metaphors.
Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me: (today’s opinion)

1. Randaam Oozham (Malayalam) by M T Vasudevan Nair: This novel is a retelling of the Mahabharata from Bhima’s point of view. There is no change in the framework of the story as put by Vyasa, but instead MT (as he is popularly known) has filled in silences in some portions of the original.
   Dritharashtra said that the reason he could not sleep was because Bhima was on the other side. For MT, Bhima was the character who won the war for the Pandavas and the person who did not gain anything at the end. His son was sacrificed to save Arjuna. At the end of the war Yudhishtira said, “Let Bhima be the king”, but later changed his mind. So what happened in all these situations and how Bhima reacts is the basis of the novel.
   You have to read the Malayalam version for the poetic language. But for non-Mallus, a bad English translation is also available.

2. The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas L. Friedman. This book explains the fundamentals of globalization in an easy to read way. Friedman travels all around the world and interviews the movers and shakers to validate his theories. My detailed review is here.
3. The Asterix Series by Goscinny and Uderzo. The year is 50 BC and Gaul is occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely. Every character in this series is likable, from the pony tailed Gauls, with names like Asterix, Unhygenix, Fullyautomatix, to Julius Caesar, to the pirates, to the Roman foot soldiers (“Join the army they said, It’s a man’s world they said”). The drawings are filled with so much detail that you discover something about Dogmatix during each read. I love this more than Tintin since it combines history and humor.
4. Dave Barry’s books. I did not like his work of fiction much, but his non-fiction will have you rolling down a staircase laughing. Being a fan of his columns in Miami Herald, it was finally a dream come true when I finally met him in Los Angeles.
5. The Art of Living : Vipassana Meditation: As Taught by S. N. Goenka by William Hart. This was the technique by which Siddhartha became Buddha. This small book explains this 2500 year old technique which does not require the blessing of any God. The realization that 2500 years ago, a man was able to achieve such insights into human mind was actually, mindblowing.

You can read all my book reviews here.
Tag five people and have them do this on their blogs:
Niraj – tags
Parag
Babu
Ashish – tags
bhavane – tags

Since most of us are stupid and cannot decide what is good or bad for us, the all knowing benevolent Government has decided to step in

The Indian government is to outlaw all images of smoking in Bollywood films and television shows in a move praised by campaigners as a “sensible step” but attacked by film-makers as a curb on artistic freedom.
The ban, the most comprehensive of its kind in the world, will outlaw shots showing cigarette packs and advertising hoardings. Foreign movies and serials, increasingly popular especially when dubbed into local Indian languages, will have the offending images electronically blurred.[India to ban smoking in films and TV shows ]

So if James Bond is making love to a naked woman who is smoking, just the image of the cigarette will be blurred and that is the way it should be. Movies predating the ban are supposed to run a series of health warnings across the bottom of the screen. So when Shah Rukh Khan is about to beat up Amrish Puri, everything will pause and the hero, villain and sidekicks will wait till the health warnings flash below. This should heighten the tension in the scene.
Next the minister should ban guns. These can kill instantly and I don’t know why no one has campaigned against it. In predated movies, guns should be blurred. Some villains and sidekicks have bad teeth caused by paan chewing. Paan scenes should be banned. The entire song of Khaike Paan Banaraswala should be shown blurred. The word Paan should be bleeped. Did I forget to say this, a health warning should also be flashed. MNC products like Coke and Pepsi should only be shown blurred. Lassi can be shown un-blurred.
Most movies end in violence with one hero murdering lot of innocent sidekicks. This is not at all good. A sensible step would be to ban it, and predated movies will show it all blurred. With blurring you may think it is a porn movie, but hey it is a risk we have to take.
One of the essential scenes in a movie is a rain song and much water is wasted. The warning sign should be flashed before such scenes, so that residents of Chennai and Rajasthan do not attempt it at home, not to forget that the water should be blurred.
Ram Gopal Varma has been making many scary movies and it scares the bejeesus out of me. There should be a mandatory warning sign before each scare. If ghost like characters or Bobby Deol is in the movie, they should be blurred.
Finally with all this blurring, the only things that will remain unblurred are these. But they should not be banned since they cannot corrupt young minds.

The other star attractions in the film are the tigers, who earlier featured in the Hollywood film, Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe.
I took their paw prints as autograph,” Vivek laughs. “The three tigers were not tied (up) when they were acting with us. I just had to rely on the fact that the tigers were trained and would not harm us. Once a tiger got lost in the elephant grass, and we didn’t know from where it would emerge! Thank God everything went well.” [I wanted Ajay Devgan’s role: Vivek ]

These tigers remind me of the out of work Hollywood actor, who had to act in a Bollywood movie to make ends meet in Nagesh Kukunoor’s brilliant satire Bollywood Calling. Also note that the tigers did not ask for Vivek’s autograph or paw print.

One of my favourite books is The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which was a great introduction to the fundamentals of Globalization. After that I read two of Friedman’s books, Longitudes and Attitudes : The World in the Age of Terrorism and From Beirut to Jerusalem both excellent books. Now he has a new book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century.
The reviewer in WaPo writes

Friedman also does not have a compelling rebuttal for Harvard’s Michael Sandel, who calls Flat World’s new horizontal collaboration “just a nice name for the ability to hire cheap labor in India.” For instance, Indian techies had the manpower and ambition to do the “huge, tedious job” of fixing the West’s Y2K computer bug, giving India a surge of IT business that Friedman calls “a second Indian Independence Day.” But India’s Y2K windfall could be read just as easily as a sign of dependence, of reliance on tasks that American workers no longer want. Friedman rightly notes that “low-wage, low-prestige jobs in America . . . become high-wage, high-prestige jobs” when outsourced to India. But in an era where, as Friedman puts it, both pride and humiliation get served up to you via fiber-optic cable, it’s not at all clear we’ll like the long-term geopolitical consequences of having emerging powers reliant on scraps from the American economic table.
While The World Is Flat is not a classic like From Beirut to Jerusalem, it is still an enthralling read. To his great credit, Friedman embraces much of his flat world’s complexity, and his reporting brings to vibrant life some beguiling characters and trends. If his book is marred by an exasperating reliance on the first person and a surplus of catch phrases (” ‘Friedman,’ I said to myself, looking at this scene, ‘you are so twentieth-century. . . . You are so Globalization 2.0’ “), it is also more lively, provocative and sophisticated than the overwhelming bulk of foreign policy commentary these days. We’ve no real idea how the 21st century’s history will unfold, but this terrifically stimulating book will certainly inspire readers to start thinking it all through.

Massacre at the Palace: The Doomed Royal Dynasty of Nepal by Jonathan Gregson, Miramax Books, 255 pages

In 1846, Queen Rajya Laxmi of Nepal had an illicit relationship with Gagan Singh Bhandari, the minister in charge of civil affairs. When this news came out in the open, someone shot dead Gagan Singh wile he was at prayer on the roof of his home. When the Queen heard about this, she sent orders summoning all senior officers to the assembly ground known as Kot. From the balcony, she demanded the identity of the murder of her lover. When no one answered, she accused one person and rushed towards him with a sword in her hand.
She was restrained, but rival officers had taken positions around the Kot. Soon there was gunfire all around and within minutes thirty members of Nepal’s aristocracy including three ministers were dead. The nobility who were not killed in the Kot massacre were later hunted down. Later her minister turned against her and put her under house arrest and later exiled to Benares in India.
In 2001 , when Prince Dipendra gunned down members of his family, he was just following the tradition of the Nepali Royal family. Prithvi Narayan Shah, ruler of a small kingdom conquered all the others, even more powerful ones and formed the present day Nepal in the 17th century. He set the condition that the eldest son of the King should succeed him. This caused some problems when the King had many wives and each Queen wanted her son to be the King. Some Kings, to make their position secure would have the closest relatives jailed or exiled.
The man who became King in 1775 was Pratap Singh who had two wives. The first Queen, when she came to know that her rival Queen was pregnant, wanted to secure the position for her son. King Pratap Singh died when he was twenty five and immediately Queen Rajendra Laxmi’s two-year old son was declared the King. The Queen became the regent with tremendous powers. She allowed the second Queen to have her son, and immediately after that forced her to perform sati even though a month had passed since the king’s cremation.
After presenting the history of Nepal and the court dramas, the book leads to what the title says, the Royal Massacre of 2001. Thus we get introduced to Crown Prince Dipendra, and come to know that he loved playing the guitar and the traditional Nepali drum and he volunteered for tough infantry training and parachute courses. He sat on meetings with his father, King Birendra on key policy issues, thus preparing to be the king, later. He was also fond of drugs (hashish and marijuana), guns (M-16, 9mm Heckler and Koch MP5K) and women (Supriya Shah, Devyani Rana).
His mother Queen Aishwarya was not fond of Devyani Rana whom Dipendra wanted to marry, since Devyani was related to the Scindias of India and they considered the Nepali Royal family below them. The relationships soured in the palace over the marriage question and many discussions were done over this and sharp words were exchanged. Finally the Queen threated that if he married Devyani, his title would be stripped and financial allowance restricted.
After this there is a detailed description of what happened on the evening of June 1, 2001 whe Prince Dipendra opened fire killing his parents, siblings and close relatives and later killing himself. Jonathan Gregson provided a minute by minute update on that fateful evening when Nepal plunged into a deep crisis.
I knew very little about Nepal’s history and this book provided a short but wonderful introduction to Nepal and the build up to the events of 2001. The book is big on people and we meet not just the Royal Family of Nepal, but also the Prime Ministers, their families and their power struggle. The book is very focussed on the title and does not deviate with other side stories unless they have a direct bearing on the kingdom, such as India’s intervention in the 1950s to restore the monarchy.
This book does not provide any references or footnotes and so when the author makes statements like the tiff between Queen Aishwarya and Sonia Gandhi strengthened Rajiv Gandhi’s determination to impose an economic blockade of Nepal, we have to be skeptical. The cover of the book says that the author had exclusive interviews with the late King Birendra and surviving members of the Shah family, but no credits are provided. The book has no index either which I think is a must for any non-fiction book.
This is a very readable book, for the tragic human story told.