Book Review — An Accidental Prime Minister

I heard about — and bought — this book right during the Indian General elections of 2014, at a time when the end of Dr Singh’s administration was almost in sight, Modi’s soaring win was seen as inevitable.

Book Review — Cruising Altitude

Among the many books I have read and reviewed on this blog, I bet the topic of this book is different. This book is about a flight attendant’s account of a career in the air travel industry — part memoir, part tell-all, part tips and tricks on how to make your journey…

Album Review — Bombay Makossa

There is a thing with the term fusion music. The word itself has lent itself to lot of hyper-generalization, abuse and a “catch-all” genre for the music labels and sometimes the musician themselves. I prefer the word collaboration, but that doesn’t really sound like a name of…

Book Review — An Uncertain Glory

I begin this review with the authors’ quote of Shobhaa De, a political commentator.

The India we are lauding forms but a microcosm of this vast land. It is the India of the elite, the privileged, the affluent. The only India we want the rest of…

Book Review — Outliers

I am a sucker for empirical analysis of larger-than-life phenomenon — especially those that make suggestions along the lines of “this is what conventional wisdom suggests…but here’s the REAL reason”.

Book Review — A Southern Music

I first started writing a review for this book in the form of a letter to the author, and later changed my mind. In the letter version are many questions I had written as I read the book, hoping to pose them to the author some day. I am still hopeful.

Software defined phones

There was a time when people’s “cool” factor was measured by how small their phones were. Innovations in hardware and manufacturing segments allowed phone makers to pack more transistors into the same form factor and as a result, phones got better and smaller.