Author Archives: krishna

Asterix the Gladiator

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Rating: *** (3 stars out of 5)

Asterix the GladiatorIn Book 4 of the Asterix series, Asterix and Obelix go to Rome! A Roman Prefect has a crazy idea — why not capture one of the indomitable Gaulish villagers and present them to Julius Caesar for use in the circus. So Cacofonix the bard is captured and taken to Rome. But Asterix and Obelix find out what happened and take a trip to rescue the bard. Along the way, we also get to see some Phoenicians, pirates and even an Egyptian who likes drawing on Roman pillars.

Once again, it is an adventure and we don’t get to see much of the Gaul village. Even though he is the reason for the story, Cacofonix has a surprisingly small role mostly centered around his horrible singing, and in the end, is tied and gagged up when the heroes return back after rescuing him. Also, we seem to have a repeat of “Asterix the Gaul” with an intervention by Julius Caesar at the end, although he does get a lot of screen time in the second half of the book.

But in general, it is a good read. Hilarious at critical points in the story. The drawing and the side jokes continue to get better.

India After Gandhi, by Ramachandra Guha

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Rating: ***** (5 stars out of 5)

India After GandhiThis is a masterpiece of a history book by the author, Ramachandra Guha. It is a unique book in that I have not seen any other book cover the period after Indian Independence in any meaningful sense. During my school days, we got to read about ancient Indian civilizations, the medieval period of the Mughal empire, and the freedom struggle, but they were particularly silent about what happened next, even though they would discuss about world events during the same period. So “India After Gandhi” was helpful in bridging that gap in my knowledge, and I am sure would help for other Indians who have hazy ideas about the period, especially before they started following political events.

The book covers the period from 1947 to 1990 in great detail (while running through events of the last two decades) and contrasts the differing styles of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Nehru comes across a statesman who valued democracy and freedom, preserving the union of India through the early critical years. The book has harsh words for Indira, who although a more decisive ruler than Nehru, damaged Indian democracy in many ways, such as eliminating the democratic nature of elected leadership within the Indian National Congress and politicizing the bureaucracy. But “India after Gandhi” does not spare the opposition either: leaders like Jayaprakash Narayan who resorted to massive agitation against Indira, putting the country into unnecessary turmoil.

But the focus of the book is not about the politicians of the time. It is about answering the question, “Why is India still in one piece and still democratic?” After all, India is a huge experiment. The landmass covered by the country of India never existed as one entity in history before. It has people of different faiths, classes, castes and languages. It seeks to be a secular democracy in a region that never had any democratic traditions and is populated by strongly religious people. Yet a democratic India survives.

The author does a great job of presenting the different forces and events (insurgencies, fundamentalism, nepotism, corruption) that have sought to split the country, contrasting them with the mitigating influences that continue to unite her. There is the Nehru family and the Congress, which has been a constant presence in Indian politics. The various accommodations to linguistic and regional demands has served to mute demands for secession, even if violent movements still exist in Kashmir and elsewhere. Increasing prosperity has made more Indians feel part of the country’s growth and the entertainment industry (movies, in particular) have created a common culture. The rise of regional parties has meant coalition politics which have allowed minority voices to have greater access to power levers.

Overall, a great book. As I said, one of its kind. The last book on India I had read was the excellent “Freedom at Midnight” by Dominique Lapierre, and Larry Collins, which found its conclusion with the horrors of Partition. This book started where that ended. And even if you think you know many of the events of this period through political osmosis, you will be surprised at the detail revealed by this book.

Asterix and the Goths

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Rating: **** (4 stars out of 5)

Asterix and the GothsThe Romans in the Asterix series are the villains, but they are usually portrayed as bumbling villains. In this book, we get to see another bunch of antagonists, the Goths, who are a little more evil than they are idiots, though towards the end, they also turn out to be easily manipulated fools.

If you recall, “Asterix and the Golden Sickle” was about getting a new sickle for Druid Getafix so that he could go to the Druid conference in time. So this volume starts off with the conference where the Goths in hiding to find a resource to deploy against the Romans see Getafix win the conference, and decide to kidnap him. Asterix and Obelix go into Goth territory to rescue the Druid and upon finding him, decide to teach the Goths a lesson.

By this volume, we can see the drawing in the series become very mature and detailed. There is a lot of wicked humor, especially with the Goth interpreter trying to save his hide with liberal translations of what Getafix says. The only criticism I have is that the ending feels a little rushed, something that manifests itself in the second last page where the panel design gets changed to accommodate the hurried rush of the plot. But overall, a great read.

English Songs, Part III

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Yet Another List

  1. “Missing” by Everything but the Girl
  2. “I Just Called to Say I Love You” by Stevie Wonder
  3. “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac
  4. “Stayin’ Alive” by Bee Gees
  5. “Who Knew” by Pink
  6. “Secret Garden” by Bruce Springsteen
  7. “Before He Cheats” by Carrie Underwood
  8. “I Will Always Love You” — the Whitney Houston version
  9. “Brass in Pocket” by The Pretenders
  10. “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper
  11. “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield
  12. “Here Without You” by 3 Doors Down
  13. “Need You Now” by Lady Antebellum
  14. “Home” by LCD Soundsystem
  15. “Heads Will Roll” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
  16. “Rolling in the Deep” by Adele
  17. “Don’t Leave Home” by Dido
  18. “Listen to Your Heart” by Roxette
  19. “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green
  20. “Take It Easy” — The Eagles version

Also, here is some music (I believe from the Twilight soundtrack)

Asterix and the Golden Sickle

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Rating: ***** (5 stars out of 5)

Asterix and the Golden SickleThis is one of my favorite Asterix stories. The second in the Asterix series, the creators, Goscinny and Uderzo, have overcome most of the formative problems they had with “Asterix the Gaul”. The volume has a solid plot and strongly establishes the bond between Asterix and Obelix by sending them into an adventure together. The village and its characters still don’t feature very prominently (that will come later on), but we do get other Gauls and Romans.

The story starts when Getafix breaks his sickle and Asterix and Obelix volunteer to go to Lutetia to buy a new one for him. On reaching Lutetia (modern-day Paris), they find sickles are in short supply and the famed sicklesmith Metallurgix (Obelix’s cousin) is missing. After some investigation, they uncover a sickle-trafficking gang. How they bust them up and rescue Metallurgix is the rest of the story.

The greatness of the Asterix books comes in the drawings, where you can find amazing gems in the corner of each picture, not to mention references to the present day. With this book, the Asterix series establish that tradition. Every page is a marvel to read and discover. There is a lot of humor, most prompted by Obelix’s idiosyncrasies. Asterix, of course, is the Everyman, forever playing it serious and straight. I do have a minor quibble with the economics of the story — the new price of the sickles by the gang will ensure no sales, but that doesn’t affect the story too much.

Book Review — Asterix the Gaul

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Rating: *** (3 stars out of 5)

Asterix The GaulThis is going to be the first of a series. Let me start with saying why I love Asterix. During my middle school days, we used to have exams just before Christmas. Although these did not determine whether you went to the next grade (those were the March exams), they were used to dish out certificates for good performance. I used to get a few for math and science subjects — for some reason, I was not so good at social studies and language, the former of which is kind of weird as I got really deep into history and economics in the last several years. My father, as a celebration, would take me to the city, buy me a great lunch and then take me to a bookstore where I would buy an Asterix book.

This means I am very fond of some of the Asterix books because I used to own them, such as “Asterix at the Olympic Games” and “Asterix and the Golden Sickle”. For a long time, I used to dream of eating Swiss cheese (which I do) and eating boar (which I never did as I stopped most kinds of non-vegetarian food). I wanted to read them all, and our school library had many Asterix books, but I could never get my hands on several as they were all in great demand. And as time went by, I moved to Hardy Boys, and Agatha Christie. The saga ends there for a while until recent times.

There are 2 categories of Asterix books, one with René Goscinny and the other without him. Although Goscinny died in 1977 before I started reading Asterix, I was mostly familiar with only the first category because there were only 3 books by Uderzo at that time. There literally is no comparison between the two categories. With a few exceptions, the Asterix books created with Goscinny as the writer and Uderzo as illustrator are far superior in the plot, writing and even the illustrations! Think about it, the Uderzo-only “Asterix and the Falling Sky” has aliens! Aliens! What an utter disaster!

So let us talk about “Asterix the Gaul”. As the first book in the series, it introduces us to the village where Asterix lives and the secret of the magic potion that helps them stave off the Romans. When the story starts, the Romans are still unaware of the secret and keep getting beaten up without knowing why. A spy is dispatched and he manages to find the secret and get back to the Roman camp. The Romans capture Druid Getafix, but soon Asterix reaches the camp and they make a mockery of the Romans’ attempts to get Getafix make the magic potion for them.

The fact that it is the first Asterix book definitely shows. Apart from Asterix and Getafix, the Gauls do not have very prominent roles and they completely disappear from the story halfway through. Obelix also has a very low profile, with Asterix only taking him along once to the forest in three episodes. The drawing of Obelix, Getafix (initially) and other characters differ a bit in contrast to their appearances in other Asterix books. The Romans take up a lot of “screen time”.

The subplot of the Roman spy is very funny, but the story overall is not that great. Asterix and Getafix are at the Roman camp for several days, but there is no mention of what is happening back at the village. Was anyone worrying about them? Also, why didn’t the Romans try to attack the village when they realized that the magic potion’s effect did not last for ever? The ending was also contrived with the appearance of Julius Caesar which only served the purpose of introducing him into the story.

I still recommend it, if nothing else, as an introduction to the series.

Swapping Values of Two Integer Variables

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The simplest way to swap the values of two variables is to have a third variable that can temporarily hold the value of one variable while the other is being copied. This is very easy code, but a small problem is that we have to allocate extra memory. In these days of gigabytes of data, that is not a huge concern. But still it is useful to know a technique where you can achieve that.

So here are a couple of ways to do that I saw in a few places. I don’t have the name of the original author, I am assuming that it became common knowledge early. The first method uses addition, but if you have large values, then there is the chance of arithmetic overflow based on the result. The second method uses bitwise operations that avoid the “over-flaw” (sorry!)

public class Swap extends Object
{
    public static void main(String args[])
    {
        int a = 123;
        int b = 345;
        System.out.println(a + " : " + b);

        //Swapping using temporary variable : straight-forward method
        int temp = a;
        a = b;
        b = temp;
        System.out.println(a + " : " + b);

        //Swapping using arithmetic operations : saves memory
        a = a + b;  //You can use a += b;
        b = a - b;
        a = a - b;  //You can use a -= b;
        System.out.println(a + " : " + b);

        //Swapping using bitwise operations : avoids arithmetic overflow
        a = a ^ b;  //You can use a ^= b;
        b = a ^ b;  //You can use b ^= a;
        a = a ^ b;  //You can use a ^= b;
        System.out.println(a + " : " + b);
    }
}

Book Review — The Mystery of the Blue Train, by Agatha Christie

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Rating: ** (2 stars out of 5)

The Mystery of the Blue TrainOne of Agatha Christie’s poorest efforts with Hercule Poirot, as she herself acknowledged. I wouldn’t say that it is a complete waste of time, but the writing is amateurish and the final conclusion not very satisfying, Poirot’s summary failing miserably. The “murder on a train” plot was done in a much better fashion in “Murder on the Orient Express”.

The key problem in the story is the lack of characters you want to identify with. In many stories, Christie builds up characters that we become very sympathetic to. When some suspect is used as a red herring, either Christie comes up with a justification that we empathize with, or the character is truly bad and comes to a miserable end. In “The Blue Train”, the characters are so skin-deep that I actually wanted one of the “good” characters to be the murderer, which didn’t happen. While the ending itself was pulled out of a hat, it was at the same time totally predictable the way the rest of the book went.

More Hindi Songs, Contd.

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I guess there will be more of this series. I haven’t watched some of these movies, so there will be fewer notes.

  1. “Chahunga Main Tujhe”, from “Dosti” (1964).
  2. “Yeh Jeevan Hai” from “Piya Ka Ghar” (1972): Another song in it (““Ye Zulf Kaisee Hai””) is also sweet.
  3. “Mera Raja Beta” from “Anuraag” (1973): There are 2 versions of the song, the happy one is very sweet and the sad one is heartbreaking in the context of the scene.
  4. “Tere Mere Hoton Pe” from “Chandni” (1989): I liked this movie when I saw it, but can hardly remember the story unlike many movies from the same period. But the songs are still pretty good. Another one is “Lagi Aaj Sawan”.
  5. “Morni Bagha” from “Lamhe” (1991): The first half is excellent with both a good story and great songs, but the second half goes downhill. Not sure why it is a cult classic because the change of pace and emotions in the second part makes the movie fall down on its face. This song perhaps epitomizes the movie as it too goes wobbly at the end.
  6. “Tum Bhi Chalo” from “Zameer” (1974): I don’t remember much of this movie other than it is kind of the opposite of Lamhe, where it started poorly, but ended on a high note. But my memory could be failing me here.
  7. “Zindagi Imtehan Leti Hai” from “Naseeb” (1981).
  8. “Thoda Hai Thode Ki Zaroorat Hai” from “Khatta Meetha” (1978): Some rotten acting, but the song itself is good.
  9. “Kuchh Dil Ne Kaha” from “Anupama” (1966): Another great song from the same movie is “Dheere Dheere Machal”.
  10. “Aane Se Uske” from “Jeene Ki Raah” (1969)
  11. “Chhup Gaye Saare Nazaare” from “Do Raaste” (1969): The popular songs of this movie have little to do with the main plot.

Book Review — Murder in Mesopotamia, by Agatha Christie

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Rating: *** (3 stars out of 5)

Murder in MesopotamiaThis is one of those mysteries where you are very happy at the conclusion when you are reading the book, but after sometime, you start questioning everything. The book develops as Agatha Christie novels usually do. An initial murder, suspects, additional murders, red herrings followed by the final unveiling of the actual murderer. The explanation seems to fit all the known facts. So you are happy. But then after you put down the book, your mind wanders back to the book and slowly things that you digested seem to float back up.

How do I explain this without any spoilers? Well, first, if the murderer is who he/she is revealed to be, then it is pretty incredible given the other events described in the book which are not connected to the murderer, but happen during the course of the novel. Second, the crime depends on too many things to go exactly right, including the timing. There is also the question as to why the murderer chose this particular method of execution when there were so many easier ways. Why even Mesopotamia for that matter?