What is it with the Swedish Crime fiction and TV shows...

...that they tend to be so gripping and completely worth the time spent?

This week I finished the second season of 'Bron/Broen' or The Bridge, the award winning Swedish/Danish TV crime fiction show; with Saga Norén and Martin Rohde in the lead, played by Sofia Helin and Kim Bodni. This was right after I finished the first season; because I had to see it! Odd as Saga maybe, real and in-touch-with-his-feelings that Martin maybe, and what a complementary pair they make, the characters just grow on you. If you have seen Bones, the US show, and remember Dr. Temperence 'Bones' Brennan, played skillfully by Emily Deschanel, you know a milder cousin of Saga! European shows make no bones of (no pun intended!) what they want to show or portray. The story line of Bron is simply gripping, the suspense creeps up on you, and in the end you get more than you expected. The cinematography seems largely 'grey' which adds to the drama and emphasizes the serious (sometimes Saga is really funny in her naiveté of emotions around people!) theme.

End of second season two, especially, brought out facets of Martin and Saga each that made you sit and think how do the writers and directors (several credited) pack so much into their work. The story line remains multidimensional throughout Helin and Bodni as well as a couple of others display immense talent. While the crime remains the main focus of the story, and you are in the detective mode all through, you cannot but wonder how the Saga and Norén's personalities will pan out given how their individual and separate lives are panning out as the series progresses. How many shows do that to you? (The Americans is an exceptional show in the same way).  Relationships are never easy, but the imminence of the inevitable lurks around in your mind even as you know things wouldn't workout how much ever you wish they would. I am sure I missed some dimensions even as I saw the original Swedish/Danish version with English subtitles. But what I felt watching Bron has made me start searching for more of the crime fiction shows from Scandinavia.

It all started last year, when I got in to a reading spree and managed to read about 50 books, mostly fiction, in the year. About a dozen or so were Swedish crime, starting with (of course!) Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, first of which is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I have not seen the movie yet, but I am not in a hurry. Some of the other writers I have managed to read so far include Karin Alvtegen (The Missing), Camilla Läckberg (The Preacher) and Henning Mankell (The Fifth Woman). I plan to read  Jo Nesbø's The Leapord, among others, soon. 

It had been a long time since I had read crime fiction. But, Swedish crime fiction pulled me back in to it. I must admit, I am a big fan of Jack Reacher by Lee Child. I have read all the books including novellas on Jack Reacher. That said, while I like Reacher for completely different reasons, little comes close the intense narrative of Swedish crime fiction, as far as crime fiction works go. I admit I am able to read the English translated version of these fine writings. So, while it would be great to have been able to read the books and watch the shows in native tongue, I am floored by what I have managed to gain from the translated or subtitled works.

A couple more useful links: 

My favourite page on Scandinavian Crime Writers

My Facebook page on Jack Reacher

Review of 'The Bastard of Istanbul'

The Bastard of Istanbul is a gripping tale of love, lovelessness and family secrets painted on a canvass of Turkey’s vivid cultural melange. The characters depict a lot of passion both in their rebelliousness and conformity, portraying in them the conflicts of daily life living the modern life with the burden of the past.

I picked up this book as a predecessor to the much acclaimed The 40 Rules of Love, a book I loved for its intense mystic undertones. The exceptionally creative narrative made me an instant Elif Shafak fan. The narrative is quite different as compared to 40 Rules. But interleaving time-spans to narrate intricate tale seems to be a favourite common factor. Intense characterisation with highly sensitive handling of characters’ emotions stays with you. For example the balloon seller sailing away on the boat over Bosphorus remains vivid in its detail days after closing the book.

The Bastard beautifully brings out the nuances of the cultural and political modern history of Turkey. If you are interested in the vicissitudes of Turkish and Armenian lives through the modern history of Turkey, this is as good a book that provides an up close and personal view. Be prepared for an insider’s perspective on the culture based political conflicts as well as generational differences in interpretations. It raises interesting questions like What’s better –to remember your history or the forget it or not know it all? How much are you accountable for the actions of your societal ascendants? The book is an interesting journey in the gastronomic essence of Turkish culture. Are the chapter titles the ingredients of Ashure? If yes, that’s another neat dimension to the narration. And when the ingredient list is done, you know that Ashure is ready. But, still, I did not see that end coming.

Elif Shafak is my favourite contemporary literary fiction writer in just two books in a little over as many months; three more arrived a few days back.  Bastard of Istanbul is a must read if you like to explore the exotic.

-Gowrish

Prashant John's first degree take on "our" Second Degree

Just put down this awesomely funny rendition of 1-year-long-mid-life-mid-career break at IIMA. Prashant, from the pioneering batch of PGPX takes an equilibrised look at the going-ons in the corridors and classrooms of the hot bed of management education that IIMA is. (Note the author's disclaim- this is a work of fiction.)

Having withstood this place and programme two years after Prashant (that makes me an 'X3'), I could relate to the flaps in the ebb and flow of PGPX year that he recounts. I must admit I was following this book before the launch, but somehow lost track of it. I picked it up, on a friend's (another X3, the 'Bandit') reminder,  while out for ConneXion 2010 . Being on campus, reliving the times again over a long weekend, had already stirred up memories of my travails from 30 to 18 months ago. On top of this 'Second Degree' came as a 'Red Bull for memories'.

From a 'can't be true, am I here?' to 'what the.., am I already leaving?' the PGPX year passes by in a jiffy, much like a vaccine shot you dreaded as a kid. But, life is fun and life is topsy-turvy at PGPX (not in the same order, though). A deep dive in to the making of aN X-ian is what this book is all about. Prashant has handled the narration in a very touching manner, candidly exploring the joys, fears and dilemmas that every student (including his/her spouse) at PGPX faces.

Every year a little world lands in the New Campus- men, women, little boys and girls, toddlers and their fathers & mothers with their bikes, cars and cradles and sometimes even their maids and babysitters. Every batch has its own set of characters in the play of PGPX that gets produced every year. Like an improvisation (a comedy only to a sadist outsider) plots and sub-plots vary in flavour a little, but the storyline is the same. In several ways, each X-ian is a Prashant  and shares his struggles as a student. Prashant the author, though, really knows how to make you laugh.

The book is bound to pleasantly shock those who are aspiring PGPX and at the same time wake from stupor those (the PGPX-ians) who have gone back to the relatively slower life that post-IIMA life invariably becomes.

For PGPX Alumni the familiarity and the "familiailty" this book invokes makes it all the more of a souvenir to keep along side other memorabilia they carry with them. When I got through PGPX admissions, in order to mentally prepare myself for what I was to endure, I read Snapshots from Hell . If you are considering IIMA PGPX, Second Degree is your own customised and in-your-face 'Snapshots from Hell'. Read it.

Review of 'Snapshots from hell- The making of an MBA':

Set in the recent past,1988-1990, this book published in 1994 is a very funny, honest and absorbing take on the life of a Stanford MBA student. The author, Peter Robinson, does not spare himself or the college in describing his emotional roller coaster ride of realising his ambition to be a business graduate. With brutal honestness Robinson recounts, in first person narrative, his fears, failures and successes in overcoming the natural Poet (In Stanford lingo, a person who has no significant engineering, mathematical or financial educational background) in him while grappling with the quantitative-heavy Stanford syllabus.

This is a fictionalised autobiography in that the incidents in the story are all true and the protagonist or the observer is the author himself while the names, which could feasibly be changed have been masked. The author admits that 'there was no point in masking popular personalities' and so some of them from his friends' circle or faculty have been retained. Focussing primarily the first year and the summer internship period, Robinson traces his daily life with quotations from his personal journal. The natural flair of rhetoric that the author possesses is quite evident in three places: his pre-Stanford position as a speech writer for President Reagan; Robinson's own journal entries (no doubt written under heavy B-school-pressure) and the wit in storytelling itself.

The book is useful to any b-school student. But, it is especially required to be read by any student who is entering a well-placed or top b-school anywhere, as the philosophy or pedagogy of Stanford (like that of other global top b-schools) is bound to have influenced his or her school's didactics. What make this book timeless are the principles of selection and teaching of Stanford that are only pioneering and not transient, meaning that with time the best practices will only spread globally. The pedagogy and rigor influence a student's life significantly and therefore the experiences are bound to be similar. Today, this is especially true to India because we are witnessiing a globalisation of b-school education here, not suprisingly due to the free-market capitalisation being attempted by India, the growing demand for globally-experienced b-school graduates in Indian mainstream economy and the rise in ambition owing to affordability of quality b-school education. Of course, there are also more than ever Indian students who are able to afford and embrace international business schools.

The reader, especially, if he is in the target audience described earlier will instantly empathise with the author since within the first few pages, the author gives examples of various types of questions and analyses (and answer with diagrams) discussed in the class that added to the latter's misery. The reader thereby gets the benefit of learning about the mindset expected of a b-school student. The author describes with a natural sense of humour, his tribulations in mastering the apparently simple concepts (for the non-Poets) all along doubting his fitment in the Stanford's scheme of things.

During the course of the story, one also gets a glance at the recent history of the school and an understanding of the factors that challenged and led to the evolution of some of the top schools in the US. In the process of understanding the author's student-life, the readers are bound to get satisfactory answers to whether it was all worth it for the author and by extension lead to an introspection of their own motives. Of course, everything is relative and situational and then the book itself is not instructive; but, the subtle impact is lasting.

Wit, honesty and brevity are the key take-aways from Robinson's style.This is an unputdownable book and a must read for all b-school aspirants; an almost 'rite of passage' as I had been told.

Games Indians Play


If your mind is running in the direction of the popular transactional analysis book of similar title, you are not too far from the truth this book has to tell you. An interesting take on 'Desis in their own Des' , this is the name of a book by (erstwhile) Prof.V Raghunathan of IIM Ahmedabad.

Most of us would have argumentatively discussed at length, albeit with a pinch of self-righteous exclusivity, about why we are 'like that only' but without questioning why not? When I discussed this book with a couple of my friends, the system came out at the cause rather than the effect, a stance that is opposite of what this book takes. Just so you know the book is not passionate about reformation, but the cold logic of it is bound to leave a whiff of reason on you.

Offering umpteen Indian-way-of-life examples which all of us have lived through, the author sets the context for his analysis of this drama that we play in daily social life (read as behaving as a community). The message is clear- social life is what we fail at. Ironically, while we are, and not without reason, rational individuals, we are victims of our own over-rationalisation. Artfully, Prof VR tells the reader why Indians are some of the brightest somebodies but a miserable community living with their self-created acceptance of norms. He explores Why spitting, relieving,shoving, queue-jumping and many other "-ings" in public that have impacted all but bothered the more reasonable of the lot, are not just hangovers of pre-freedom era, but realities of post-60-year-freedom age.

We may have argued passionately about what can be done to improve it, only to conclude by questioning how much can one-in-a-more-than-billion person's action change the system.It is this 'what can just one do' premise that Prof.VR skillfully counters through the applications of Game Theory to social life. Taking the uninitiated reader through basic of GT, the author pushes it to the next level by explaining work done by various award winning elite researchers in applying GT to real-life situations and war strategy (Life in India is a big fight? Touche!). Then taking the book to its logical crecendo, Prof VR guides us into his perspective of what strategis in social life can reduce dissonance in person to society transactions. A small relief that I had been not wrong in playing this game right myself.

The intent of the book is quite clear, to give a logical basis for the Great Indian Drama and then, atleast, telling the reader that his action can indeed make a difference. Again, the intent is just to educate the user of the option he has to keep in mind the 'larger good' while deciding his next action. Author leaves it at that and makes no lofty pursuasions for a better India.
It is possible that the book will be read by a portion of the reading urban community. Even if they, if not already, start following the 'tit for tat' strategy in life ***in its true spirit***, I think my life will be a little easier, and so will theirs from my point of view.

I would recommend this book. At 150 pages you can breeze through this hard-bound book over a Sunday afternoon. The other 25 pages comprise bibliography, but has some interesting extracts too. The language is concise and the author makes his point quickly and crisply. A foreward by Mr. Narayana Murthy is an added shine for NRN's fans given that his writings are rarer than his speeches.

Fast Food Nation

"If economy in the last part of the 20th century depended on how internet redefined the way business is done , economy of the 21st century would be based on how businesses bring a balance between their profitability and amorality."Erich Schosser makes this assertion toward the end of his book 'Fast Food Nation' a tome about the dark side of American fast food culture.

This very engrossing book by Eric Schlosser is unputdownable. The book came out in 2001, but I read it recently. Ironically, I first saw the Indie movie 'Super Size me!' which was based on the findings of this book, and which drove me to buy this book from Amazon.com after failing to find it in several bookstores.

In this book, Schlosser has very interestingly told the story of evolution of American fast food industry and everything else associated to it. Startling the uninitiated, facts keep rolling out page after page while the author assesses the social, economic and emotional impact of current or recent practices in the food industry. Touching every aspect of the fast food revolution, the book skillfully relates the inhuman practices in slaughter houses and rendering shops to policy making over the last several decades.

The author uses real stories of ranchers and potato growers in the USA and elsewhere to make his point about how industry consolidation has impacted smaller 'farmers' and how discouragement of unionisation and deskilling of food-processing has led to the sorry state of workers involved. From there the writer goes on to illustrate the link between deskilled processes using unskilled immigrant labour and the spread of food risks from unhygenic ground meat. Schlosser also touches upon the challenges and risks posed by use of animal protein to feed poultry and cattle. In the 2004 reprint version that I read, more content has been added acknowledging the impending threat of 'mad cow' disease or BSE.

Some sections on how fast food is flavoured and colored provide insight into the huge yet less known industry that synthetic and 'natural' flavouring has become. Trivias such as those about what goes into the likes of Dannon Strawberry yogurt (almost a staple to me at the time of writing the draft) are especially suprising. These sections also provide light moments to the reader, even if it is disturbing to know that the term 'natural flavours' does not really mean that.

Schlosser also examines the international proliferation of American fast food giants, notably KFC and McDonalds and the impact of their practices on local economies and cultures. The lure and influence of fast food and pop-culture is exemplified in the episodes recounting the establishment of McDonalds in different countries. One of the qoutes by Den Fujita, the billionare who brought Mcdonald's to Japan is quite memorable and encompasses in it adoration, blind or otherwise, and the aspirational value of fast food in developed and developing countries alike.

Coming back to the qoute at the beginning of this passage- Schlosser raises the evergreen question about the role played by indutry leaders in shaping the ethics of doing business. The clout of giants makes them easy influencers on shaping of accepted processes and human resource policies.

Whether the power weilded by companies like McDonalds will be put to enhancing only the company bottomline or also be used for betterment of industry workers at large is something that only time will tell, Schlosser concludes.

The World is Flat by Thomas L Friedman

I just finished reading this book on globalisation (phase 3.0 as Friedman names what is happening now) that I picked up about two weeks ago, after its new and expanded paperback version was released. The book is striking, not because it has made any predictions or cracked theories but because it has described what has happened in recent history, in an unbiased,lucid and interesting way.

Notwithstanding the fact that I am a novice to the subject of macroeconomics and the forces that shape the business world, I found the book to be extremely informative, relevant and revealing of the concept of globalization and what happened to bring this around. Friedman has made this a narrative in first person and explained the whole idea through many stories and discussions with business leaders, interspersed with the insights and interpretations of a world class multiple-Pulitzer-prize winning journalist.

'While I was studying at college' and when Friedman says ' while he was sleeping' many levellers came up that made the ground for developing countries flatter in which to play. He then goes on the explain the way several countries, India and China primarily, have adopted new technologies and economic policies to make leaps in the global trade race.

Being in the IT industry myself, I am able to relate to a lot of what Friedman has said about how the industry has been able to work, what with the abundance of English speaking skilled youth and the obvious time zone advantage of India. In the process of reading this, I could draw parallel to the theory of Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell. There had to be in place several of the right things before China and especially India could take advantage of this and attempt to tip the scales. Anyway, that is not anywhere the main point of the book, but my own little observation.

In an unbiased way, Friedman has also churned various aspects related to outsourcing (as I am able to appreciate now, it can only be called 'right-sourcing' in today's world), and explain how outsourcing can be beneficial to the Americans, despite their natural and understandable dissent.

Based on facts again, Friedman has also tried to make his case for how religious and ideological politics have worked to the disadvantage of several nations (like Pakistan, Arabian states and many sub-Saharan states) and why if they refuse to change, there can only be more disparity these societies will feel from the other economies and societies that have opened themselves up.

It is worth reading how Friedman has tried to depict the impact of right kind of parenting on the future course of globalisation especially for the Americans. It may give us Indians a wee bit to be proud of the way our culture and society pressures push us to pursue the best of educational options.And now suddenly it seems OK that , even if only in this context, we went through it and are going through it. Well, this can also be argued against, but that will not be here.

This is an unputdownnable book, and a must read for anyone interested in the recent history of the world.