Friday, June 23, 2006

Book Review: Matter of Honor and My visit Home

As usual, hectic, but I could steal enough time off last 2 weeks to get over with Matter of Honour and enjoy weekend at my current Head Quarters, Satara. Thanks to leave I managed to get on Monday. My Godfather, the driving force behind the whole of Hem Group Satara, aka my Uncle, aka Mr. Bipin, held a BIG function on account of opening new Tata Motors showrooms in Satara & Karad, Automart certified second hand car sales office, Share Broking agency in Satara and Piaggio ape dealership in Karad. Phew! That's a lot!!! I should point out that all these people giving out dealerships are tooo cunning, shrewd and too particular about the quality of showrooms you build. You should be very tactful while dealing with them. And my uncle almost single handedly managed to acquire all these dealerships! Hats off to him!

The fun doesn't stop here, a lot of well known personalities from Satara: 2 Maharajas (who are believed to be direct decendants of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, link2), Collector (forgot his name) & Senior officials from Tata and Piaggio graced the occasions. I had a chance to meet a lot of my family friends, rather most of them. And it was fun making new friends too. If these were not enough, driving back to Pune late night at 0001 hrs was fun, esp. when you are driving on Pune-Satara highway! I reached Pune (Katraj Ghat) in just 1 hrs 31 mins. It was !@#$ed up roads at Katraj Ghat which leeched another half an hour of mine, which is no even 10kms long. It is such an important part of NH4, and still MSRTC is so reluctant to fix it. Anyway, I reached home safe and sound at 0201 hrs. And had nice time reflecting on fun I had during last 2 days.


Jeffrey Archer's Matter of Honor, kept me pretty much entertained throughout last 2 weeks. Wonderful book, a sure-shot page-turner. It is so fast paced that it could peel the paints off a jet plane! You have to read it to believe me. The fiction revolves around a misplaced/stolen Tsar's Icon, a famous painting. When his father passed away, Scott inherits a single sealed letter, one which has never been opened. As you can guess, the letter will take him to this famous painting, only to discover that the most cunning and ruthless of agents from across the world are after that painting, and he haven't a clue as to why is it so important. Neither do those agents! He is petrified to learn that these agents can murder anyone standing in their way. The story is then about Scott eloping all over Europe using all his wits just to stay alive. Soon he learns that the painting not only holds something of supreme importance to those chasing him, but also ability to exculpate his family from a scar, it, he understands, is Matter of Honour, for him to safeguard this painting!


Currently I'm devouring Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. An excellently succinct (though it is close to 700 pages thick) summary of how earth was born, how old it is, how planets are made, what is black hole, what's a universe, what's the Big Bang, a dying star, a nebulae, an atom, and lot more. And also how scientists went about reaching conclusions for all of them! Off 150 pages I read, geology section bored me to death, but my patience paid off when I hit a section on Einstein, where for the first time I was able to grasp the essence of his GTR, General Theory of Relativity. And the profound effects it had on the scientific world. Though it took me 3+ readings through those pages, it was worth the effort, only so much for beloved Einstein's GTR the century’s most celebrated thinker. For anyone seeking answers to intriguing and intractable questions, it is very likely that Bill might have already answered them here! And you don't have to be too technically oriented to go through it. Though, I whould warn you that not everyone of you will appreciate the quality of this book. This is one book, I'll definitely make a second pass through.

OOps! Am noting that my posts are increasingly lengthier! But I can't help it, there's so much to talk/write/share about. Am I getting too busy to post often, or too lazy.... it's for you to figure out!



1 comment:

psychenaut said...

hey Atul !
aMoH is a page turner allright !!
i've read it thrice in the past 5 years, and i still wanna go back to it !!
i would also recommend Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, by the same author !!

Jesal

PS:tho i m a member here, i havent had the time to even put in my first blog !!!