The City of Devi

Author: Manil Suri


The backdrop for the book is that India and Pakistan are at war and are threatening to annhilate each other. There's a looming threat of nuclear bombs being dropped on Mumbai and the city is in a state of chaos. The basic premise of a post apocalyptic India does not appeal to me and the first 100 pages of the book are dark and desolate. I did not care for the gory and brutal descriptions of the terror and mayhem in Mumbai.

The book opens with Sarita looking for her husband, Karun who has disappeared amidst all the chaos that surrounds her. Sarita tells the story of how she met Karun and eventually married him. The general theme is one of a typical Indian woman who reveres and almost worships her husband regardless of the state of her marriage. There is some mystery about their relationship, but otherwise the first 100 pages or so are not much to write home about.

The second part of the book picks up the pace and is narrated by a interesting character, Ijaz, who prefers to be called Jaz. His style of narration is much more lively and entertaining. I don't want to reveal more of the plot and will stop here. Rest assured that the book is much more than the war between India and Pakistan. Pick up the book and read it and I am sure it will leave an impression on you.

The Age of Shiva

Author: Manil Suri


Before I write about the book, I have to disclose how fascinated I am with the fact that Manil Suri is a professor of Mathematics in University of Maryland Baltimore County. For someone whose primary occupation is teaching Mathematics and who probably didn't have the luxury of a very strong early education in English Writing and Literature, he tells really good stories remarkably well. This book is no exception and is set against the backdrop of India's Independence from the British and the partition with Pakistan. The tales are poignant and heartrending and what is most troublesome is that they ring true and there are probably some very real stories out there that are similar if not worse.

The story that Suri spins is the life and times of Meera Sawhney who is born into an upper class Hindu family in New Delhi. Her father is a well to do publisher with very liberal views. The book nicely contrasts this with the life of a poor Hindu boy, Dev Arora into whose family Meera marries. Suri very vividly describes what is fairly common in Indian tradition. After marriage a bride leaves everything behind and starts life afresh with her groom's family. In this case, her husband's family is poor and very orthodox in their Hindu traditions and Meera  has to learn new customs and traditions and is literally at their mercy. What amazes me is the stoic nature of Meera and her sister-in-law in accepting their fate and bravely enduring all that is thrown at them.

There are many twists and turns along the way and Suri also describes the political climate at the time which may be lost on someone who is not familiar with this history of India. Overall, the book is a breeze to read and should while away a few hours very pleasantly.

Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder

Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb


Taleb has made quite a name for himself with "The Black Swan" and the very public fights that he has had with the establishment in Finance and Economics. This book was released with a lot of fanfare and opened to mixed reviews. Michiko Kakutani from the New York Times, conceded that many of "Taleb's observations can be thought provoking", but also added that in many instances they "are no more than personal opinions".  Given the hard time I had reading "Black Swan" I was not very inclined to suffer with another one of Taleb's maniacal rants on the establishment. Then I happened to stumble upon Taleb's talk at Google and was intrigued by his definition of "Antifragility" and wanted to learn more about it.

Let's first start with the word "Fragile". It conjures up images of glass or porcelain. Things that will shatter and be destroyed if they are manhandled. "Antifragility" on the other hand, is used to describe something that gets better with rough handling. Evolution is anti-fragile. A marathon runner's training regimen, where he/she alternates between long runs and short runs and hills and flat terrain is another example of anti-fragility. Taleb postulates that many natural systems are anti-fragile. He argues about the general notion that there is order and benefit to systems in chaos. In contrast, something that is regular is likely to have a large negative impact if it were to get off the rails.

Taleb takes aim at many folks who have made a name for themselves in fields of finance, economics, education, journalism and medicine. There's a large section on the iatrogenics of the medical profession. The whole discussion can be summarized in a couple of sentences. Taleb strongly recommends medical intervention only for serious conditions. He believes that the harmful side effects of medication are likely to be more problematic than the direct benefits you expect.

Taleb is too obsessed with his own perfection, whether it is his eating regimen, his workout, or his lifestyle. A little humility would have gone a long way in making the book more appealing to the reader. What he doesn't realize is that his book reads like a commentary; something he derides in the book. If he truly followed his own advice, he would have written the book with more skin in the game and described his life and ways in which he is following this own philosophy. It would have certainly been more authentic - a quality he regards very highly.

He does have a general sense of mathematical theory. However the book falls far short of any rigorous treatment or development of concepts. As on page 416 in the Chapter on Ethics of Fragility and Antifragility, Taleb loves to say "This is a bit technical, so the reader can skip this section with no loss". There's hardly anything rigorous in these sections. All it means is that there is more speculation, but  with the gratuitous use of the word "convexity", "non-linearity" or "fat tails" with some numbers and graphs thrown in for good measure.

Notwithstanding all the above, the book does have some very interesting examples and will make you examine many of your everyday actions with the lens of anti-fragility.