Book Review : A Game of Thrones

It has been a long time since many months i have been so engraved in a book as the "A Game of Thrones". I have just finished the first book in this series of 5 books and it has been a great journey so far.

What is so great about this book

1. The canvas is big. It has many characters and many many stories beautifully joining together in the main plot. If i may be bold enough it is on the same league as that of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings.
2. It opens your imagination in a big way. Be it the "Imp" Tyrion Lannister or Eddard Stark. All of the characters have very very interesting personalities.
3. Story revolves around the character slowly and slowly. Like you are undoing a dress fabric by fabric. Doesn't that feel nice. The chapters are neither too small nor big enough. Thus they keep you engrossed and engaged.

Life must go on

Torn and tired, but life must go on.

So many unfulfilled desires, but cannot complain.
A mask is needed to keep appearances, show must go on.
 

In the journey found some shades and some more thorns,
Loved those shades and loved those thorns.

Proud of the path, it belongs to no one. 

Let's keep on going, as life must go on.

(c) 2014 Anup Mayank

A Sister who couldn't forgive her brother

A call came in today morning. As i was busy in bathroom getting ready for office, I asked my wife - "Please check who is it?"

Few minutes later she came back to tell me that our cousin uncle Radheshyam Jha has passed away last night. He has not been keeping well for quite a some time and of course many of it were attributed to the long life he had. He has just celebrated his 90th birthday few months ago. These days i am forced to live a city life either by necessessity or by design. And thus i have not been able to visit my village very often. Maybe once in a year or two, and even that is a very rushed time bound visits. But i still fondly remember the days when we (me and my brother and sister) used to 2 months in our summer vacation. It doesn't seem that long ago. We always looked forward to our visit there, to see the beautiful mango gardens and rice fields and our beloved Radheshyam uncle.

He was always a sweet and genial person. It appeared that trouble and sorrow were either afraid of him or he had made a secret pact with them to not disturb him in public. One can always find him happily doing whatever he was doing. Be it either catching fishes from the family pond, or instructing workers on farming or talking with people on several village related issues. If we compare his achievements then we can say that he wasn't very successful in money wise, but it never bothered him.

We were his cousin niece and nephews. His face would always lit up whenever he saw us on our summer visits. We were always spoilt with chocolates, biscuits and ice-creams who were delivered by vendor on a bicycle. He loved children and children loved him.

His family consituted of his wife (Prabha), two children (a son and a daughter who are well settled now), his old widowed mother and his widow sister (Madhura). In his otherwise a very happy life, this was the only sad aspect. His sister who lost her husband after 5 years of their marriage and has been living with her brother ever since. She always seemed to be lost somewhere and kept on murmuring something, which I as a young kid never understood.

It was later when i grew up, i understood the tragedy and even after so many years, it fills my heart with sadness. The story is as this.

In their childhood, Madhura and Radheshyam were very close. They grew up together. Radheshyam was the protective elder brother and Madhura was the sweet little sister. People say that after the marriage of Madhura, Radheshyam was so overcome with loneliness for his younger sister that he didn't talk to any one for a month, till the sister came back to celebrate one of the post marriage ceremonies. That's how close they were. With the grace of god, Madhura had a baby boy after a year of marriage. Radheshyam uncle was extremely happy and very fond of his nephew. He never lost an opportunity to either bring his sister back home or go to visit her whenever the occasion arose.

Then came the unfortunate incident of death of Madhura's husband in a  road accident. It was a thunderstrike on the whole family, turning all happiness into sorrow. Everyone was talking - "What will happen to poor girl? Who will take care of her? Who will look after the young kid?" It was unbearable for Radheshyam to see his sister in any distress. He reasoned with her in-laws and brought her to live with him. As they say time heals most of the wounds. Couple of years went by. By this time he also got married to Prabha and had his first child a beautiful daughter. Prabha is also a very loving person. She accepted Madhura as her own sister and her child as her own child. Sister in laws were living very happily with the two kids growing and as ever Radheshyam was the pillar of strength.

Alas the happy moments were very short lived. It so happened that one afternoon Madhura's son started complaining of stomach ache. Everyone thought that he must have eaten something and has a normal stomach upset. They gave him some home remedies. Initially he seemed to get better and everyone relaxed. But in evening he started vomiting. He kept on vomiting for 4 hours with an interval of 30 minutes or so. His body became warm too. The local village doctor was called in. He inspected but couldn't figure out the root cause. As it was already past midnight, he gave some medicine to bring the fever down and advised to take him to city doctor as soon as possible in morning.

The whole night Madhura kept her son in her lap. Radheshyam was also sitting with her. Madhura would ask in between - "Brother will my son get better?". Radheshyam would reply - " Of course sister. It is just a matter of few hours. I will take him to the best doctor and he will be fine and play with you in no time." His consoling words had the calming strength on Madhura. But destiny has something else in mind. In morning when the doctor came again to check before taking kid to hospital, he found that kid was not breathing and didn't have any pulse. He said it was of no use taking him anywhere.

It was a shock. People started preparing for funeral and final rites. But Madhura was lost in time. She was not ready to believe that her child is no more. She kept on repeating - " Don't you dare touch him. My brother has told me , that he is going to take him to a good doctor who will treat him in no time. Can't you see that he is sleeping. Don't you disturb him. Where is my brother?"

Radheshyam was such grief stricken and was unaware to bring himself to his little sister. But people urged him and explained that "Final rites need to be performed soon otherwise body will start decaying." With a stone on his heart, he went to his sister. Seeing him, Madhura cried - "Brother look at these people. They are saying such nasty things about your nephew. When will you take him to doctor. Brother please hurry." Radheshyam hugged his sister and said - "Dear Sister. Don't worry. I will take care of your son. Give him to me." This was a white lie, but it was necessary. Then only Madhura gave her son to Radheshyam thinking that he is going to doctor.

The whole day Madhura was waiting for his son and brother to return home. Nobody had heart to tell her the truth. They asked her to eat something which she refused saying - " I am waiting for my brother. He will bring back my son. Then we all will eat together."

In the evening Radheshyam came home after performing all the rituals of funeral. Madhura was confused to see him alone and asked him - "Brother, where is my son. Why is he not with you. Is he playing outside. Let me get him." Radheshyam didn't had courage to lie any more. He caught hold of her hand and said - "My sister. I am very sorry. Your son is dead. Please forgive me." And then he started crying bitterly. Madhura was stunned to hear his words. For some minutes she just stood standing there like a statue. The she gave him the first slap on his face and then another and another and kept on doing that till her hands got tired. People tried stopping her, but Radheshyam asked them not to interfere.

Since that day Madhura had lost all her worldly senses. She was a living dead. Her sister in law took all care of her - her eating, her dress change and all her needs. But Madhura wouldn't say anything. Only time she spoke was when she saw her brother and said - "Brother, where is my son?" to which Radheshyam had no answers.

Madhura just died few years ago. After her death Radheshyam also fell ill as if he has fulfilled all his duty and now his time has come. His whole life he had this guilt of betraying his sister's trust and hoped that his sister would forgive him.

Today on hearing his death news, i close my eyes and imagine that both brother and sister are in heavenly garden and playing together as they used to do in their childhood.

Copyright 2014 @Anup Mayank

Movie Review : Bobby Jasoos

It was delightful to watch "Bobby Jasoos". It was like my favorite Hyderabadi Chicken Dum Biryani in which well cooked chicken and rice plays the major part.

Similarty in this movie Vidya Balan and the movie plot were of superb quality. The movie started entertaining from the title song. All the supporting actors have acted well and mix well with the story like the spices in Biryani.

There were 2 songs in the movie and that was the only down part of it. I think movie would have been better without it. Also the love angle between lead pair seemed a little unnecessary but what the heck, you need spices.

Some of the makeups were superb, especially the pandit one. She is completely transformed.
In summary you should see it. A full paisa wasool.

What is IBM Worklight

Many people have confusion about what is this product offering from IBM. To know fully they have to go through lots of documentation. In this post i am trying to provide a nutshell of my understanding of IBM Worklight.

Worklight is an eclipse plugin for application development just like maven plugin or ide to create other Java/web applications.
It contains embedded worklight server, so that you can deploy and test your applications from the eclipse environment itself.

Worklight applications can be of 2 types

    1) Serverside adapters : Using adapters you can retrieve data from another webservice (SOAP based or REST based) or from your backedn DB or from JMS queue. All the adapters return data to worklight application in JSON format.
   
    2) Client applications : Using worklight studio you can develop web based (HTML5), hybrid (web component and native component) and native (specific to mobile platform) client applications for both android and iOS environments.

For more information on IBM worklight you can refer to extensive documentation at

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/mobile-solutions/worklight/components/mobile-development-platform/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/ws/worklight/

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/worklight/?lang=en

A mini poem on a relaxing sunday

 My son had switched off the night while i was relaxing in the terrace. Don't know it was the effect of Murakami (Blind Willow Sleeping Woman) or Ramdhari Singh Dinkar (Kurukshetra). Anyhow i was inspired to write these 4 lines.

-------------------o---------------------

Lights are out, half moon in the sky.
Cool breeze is blowing, as clouds pass by.
Plants are swaying, silence is a bliss.
Life is a blessing, not to miss.

 ------------------o---------------------

Incidents of honesty

We are always cynical that nothing is good. Everyone is corrupt. Nobody thinks of others but themselves. I am guilty of that too. But recently saw 2 incidents in which people were genuinely honest. As you can see that these are the people who are from relatively humble backgrounds.

First Incident
==========
My wife was doing evening walk in our society. All this while when she and our 5 year old were returning back to apartment, she had somehow misplaced her phone. Now any parent with young kids can testify that phones do get lost occasionally as kids play with them. So for us it was no big deal as we thought that it will be found sooner or later. But 2 days were gone and there was no trace of it. Then we tried dialing it, but it responded that number is not reachable. On a Sunday morning one of my relatives called me and told that have we lost our phone. I was surprised that how did he know. Apparently a car driver had found the phone. As the phones battery died he was unable to call us. Somehow he managed a charger and once it was charged, he tried calling few of the earlier called numbers. And thus we came to know of it. We called him and thus got our phone back.

Second Incident
============
A few days ago while i was having my dinner, i got a call from an unknown number. When i picked the call a lady confirmed if I was Anup Mayank. Then she asked me if i had lost my wallet. I had no idea about it. So i checked my pant pocket where i typically keep it, and it was true. Wallet was not with me. Then she told me that she lives very close to where i live and asked me to come to a landmark. We were little apprehensive too as it was getting late in the night. But my wallet contained important documents (drivers licence, pan card etc). So i couldn't risk losing it. We went to the specified land mark. When the lady came here she said that she found the wallet lying on the road adjacent to our house. My wallet contained my company visiting cards too. From there she got my number. On inquiry she told that she is a household maid cum cook. She was returning back from her job when she found the wallet. Every thing was intact. We thanked her sincerely. As a token of gratitude when i tried to give her the odd few cash, she declined. On our insistence only her son accepted this.

Both these incidences have added little positivity in me.

Story of Stolen Apples

This is the story of a small village in Himachal Pradesh. Himachal Pradesh is very famous for its delicious apple orchards.

Long time ago, this village was a place of very peaceful and fun loving people except for Tuppu and his gang of boys who were into several mischief all day and night. People used to warn Tuppu and his friends that this kind of naughtiness will bring them trouble, but they paid whatsoever no attention to these warnings and continued their naughtiness and trouble making activities.

In one corner of the village, there was a very beautiful apple garden, tended by a garderner Bhikhu Singh. Bhikhu was very proud and protective of his garden. He used to work very hard in his garden. Due to his hard work and love for the plants, apples from his garden were the best in that area. Many people used to come to his garden to either look at his apples or to purchase them from him.

Tuppu and his friends also wanted to taste the delicious apples. But they didn't want to pay for it. Instead they were planning to steal some from his garden. Only problem was that Bhikhu was always in his garden with his big scary looking stick. So they were not getting any opportunity to steal.

One day they devised a plan. A young boy from their team went to Bhikhu and said - "Uncle your wife is not feeling well. She has called for you very urgently." Bhikhu was very upset to hear this. He had to rush to his home in village to look after his wife. Meanwhile Tuppu and rest of his gang who were hiding in the near by bushes got out and rushed into the garden. Now all hell broke loose. All of them started climbing trees and eating apples. During this process they broke many branches of the trees too and many apples fell on the ground.

When Bhikhu reached home and found that he has been told a lie, he became very angry. He sensed the trouble and raced back to his garden. In his horror he saw the mess created by Tuppu and his gang. When the boys saw him back they ran away from the garden and were grateful that none of them were caught. But they didn't know that Bhikhu was a magician too. He has magical powers. Although he didn't use his powers but he could cause serious problems to other people. Bhikhu thundered - "Except for birds, no one has right to eat apples from my garden without my permission. You boys first lied to me and then ate apples without my consent. Further you have caused so much damage to my beloved trees. So i curse you all to become birds."

On hearing this all the kids were very frightened. They have never seen Bhikhu so angry. Tuppu was also very sad and was feeling sorry for the misdeed he has done. All the kids went to Bhikhu and started repenting for their bad actions. Some of the smaller kids even started crying. On seeing this Bhikhu's anger calmed down a little bit. He said - "What you have done is wrong and i cannot take back the curse i have put on you. But i can see that you are truly sorry for your misbehavior. So i will tell you a way to get out of the curse. Now listen to me carefully. Tomorrow morning you all will trun into birds. So stay away from harm. But at the same time you have to help someone who is in distress. Only a good deed can mitigate the effects of a wrong deed. Now i wish you all the best."

Next morning true to Bhikhu's words all the boys along with Tuppu were turned into different kinds of birds. Someone turned to Parrot, someone to Mynah and someone else to Bulbul. They all found themselves magically shifted to the big banyan tree outside the village. It was extraordinary scene. There were so many birds of different variety sitting together on the tree. The good news was that, they all could understand each other and were able to talk among themselves. Now all the other birds started discussing with Tuppu who was a black crow on figuring out a way to get out of this problem.

Tuppu replied - "Remember what Bhikhu said. The only way to get out of this problem is by helping some one in need. Unless we find some one who needs our help we will not be able to go back to our homes. So lets all fly together and try to find some one who can use our help." All the birds liked this idea and they all followed Tuppu the crow. But as it turns out, it is not so easy to do a good work and find salvation. The birds flew all morning from this tree to other tree and from this corner to other corner. But no one seemed to need their help. Everyone was happy and doing their own work. By noon time all of them were very tired and hungry too. They were losing hope. But Tuppu being a true leader called out to them and said - "Friends we cannot loose hope. We must continue our search. Remember how sad our parents will be when they don't find us soon in our homes. We cannot make our mothers cry. We must do what we need to do to end this curse."

With this encouraging words, birds were again filled with new vigor and they started searching for the single needy soul who can use their help. And soon they found a very young boy on the mountain side near the border of the village. He seemed to be less than 5 years old and was sobbing and crying continuously.  God knows how long has been in this situation. The birds didn't recognize the boy so it seemed he was not from this village. Now Tuppu and his gang of birds have found a little boy who can definitely use some help, but the big problem was that they were birds. And the boy has no way of knowing bird talk. Tuppu said - " We must get some one from village to come here and have a look at this boy." Others replied - "But how we will be able to do that. Remember we cannot talk to villagers. Further if we go near them, they wont recognize us and someone may hit us with either a stone or stick like we used to do." Tuppu said - "Friends what you are saying is true. But if we don't help this boy soon, he may fall into danger of some wild animal or die of cold in the night. So we will have to think of some plan and take some risk to get help for this little boy." He continued - "First i will request 3 or 4 big birds to stay here and look after this boy. Rest of us will go with me to the village."

All of them had no other choice in this matter and they were also feeling very sorry for the little boy. So they did as Tuppu said. When they reached near the village Tuppu said - "Friends, we should go to the house of our village sarpanch (head of the administrative and judiciary council in village) Mr. Sukhawat Singh. He is a very kind fellow. Further there are always a bunch of people always with him, consulting on the matters of the village. So it is high probability that we can attract folks from there and bring them to the mountain.". They all agreed that this was indeed a good plan with only one problem - "How will they attract the attention of people?" This indeed was a tough question. Suddenly someone said - "Remember our dancing in a circle. We will do the circle dance. But instead of doing it in on the ground, we will do it in the air."

Tuppu was very happy to hear this proposal. He said - "This is indeed a brilliant idea. Lets divide into three groups. So we will have 3 circles in the air. And the circles will fly one after the other. First we will fly near the house of Mr. Sukhawat. I am sure someone will notice this strange behavior."

And as they thought soon people saw that birds of different variety were flying in circles in air near Mr. Sukhawat Singh's house. It was really a very curious sight. Soon people started talking about it. "Look at those funny birds. What are they doing?" A crowd started forming there. When Tuppu saw that they have been able to grab attention of enough people, he decided to follow the next step of his plan. He asked the group one to fly by to a tree which was little bit distant from that place. So the first clircle of birds flew there. After some minutes the second cirlce of bird also flew to that tree. People noticed that the circle of birds were flying away, so they also started going in that direction. Then the third circle of birds reached to that tree. Everyone was curious on this development. - " What is happening?" Some naughty boys even tried to throw some stones at those birds but were rebuked by Sarpanch. "Why are you throwing stones at these birds. Have they done anything to you? It is very bad manners to hurt someone who has done nothing to you."

So the circle of birds flew from one tree to the other one by one, which followed by the group of people on the ground. Soon they reached near the mountain. To their dismay, they saw that four birds were hovering around a little boy who seemed to be lost in that place. Now they understood the reason of this bizarre behavior of birds. One of the man in the group recognized the little boy. "Hey, he is Molu. He is son of my sister who lives in the village on the other side of this mountain. Looks like he lost his way while playing. Thanks to these birds we have found him. Lets take him to my home. Poor fellow seems to be hungry and thirstly. Oh my sister will be worrying about him too much. Lets send someone to her house and tell her that Molu is safe and with me."

All were quite excited and amazed on this development. They had never thought that birds were actually trying to help this little boy. It became talk of the village. To show their gratitude they gave food items to the birds, which all of them needed very badly. Soon it was evening time. All of the birds were very tired with today's activity and they decided to go back to the banyan tree and rest there. They were not sure if this will really nullify the curse on them, but nonetheless they were happy on the good thing they did today. Soon all of them were fast asleep.

But we all know that good actions don't go unrewarded. So in the morning they again found themselves in their bed in their respective homes. Boys had learn a very valuable lesson. They all went to Bhikhu and thanked him for teaching them the power of good work and they grew to be the noble men of that village whom everyone respected and loved.

(c) Anup Mayank 2014

Restaurant Review : Cosmo @ Balewadi Phata, Pune

Today we were in mood to try out Thai food. My wife suggested a new restaurant (Cosmo) which has opened up near Balewadi Phata (very very close to our place).

One of the drawback for this place is that it is at a busy intersection but doesn't have enough place to park vehicles. There is parallel parking on the road side but that can accommodate at the most 2 cars.

So we went inside. The interior is nothing very fancy. The staff were very courteous. We had ordered Thai Green Chicken Curry and Chicken Hakka Noodles. Rice was served along with Thai curry which was a relief as most restaurant here charge extra for white steam rice. The best part was that they are serving complementary food for kids. We ordered rice and butter chicken for my 5 year old son.

Food was not bad at all. The quantity was more than enough for all 3 of us. In fact i over ate (which I do anyways). So overall i am satisfied customer today. Next time i may try their Indian Menu. I recommend people living in this area of west Pune to try out this restaurant and drop your feedback in comment.