Out-slumming 'Slumdog' - The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga

Call it the Slumdog effect. It feels like books set in India's dark underbelly (and boy, is there a dark underbelly!) are suddenly everywhere. But if that is the only reason you start reading The White Tiger, or the reason you don't pick up this book, you do it a great disservice.

The White Tiger is the debut novel of Aravind Adiga, a Bombay based reporter previously with Time, and Financial Times. And it is a stunner. The book is the narrative of a driver, driving his master around in the dust and grime of Dhanbad in heartland India, and later, memorably, in Delhi. It is the narrative of a man who describes himself as 'half-baked indian', 'entrepreneur' and, simply 'murderer'. It is written as a series of letter from the driver, Balram Halwai (who must be one of the most original fictional creations coming out of an Indian's pen since Saleem Sinai) to the prime minister of China. Over seven nights, Balram narrates the story of his life in the 'chicken coop' of heartland India, his life as the invisible man in the front seat of a Honda City as life of consequence carries out its business in the back seat, and finally, as an 'entrepreneur' emerging out of cold-blooded murder.

What is most striking about The White Tiger is how remarkably un-Indian the writing is. And I mean that in a descriptive way, not as praise, or as a pejorative. It is stark, and entirely devoid of sentimentality. Balram is not given to sentiment. He sees and says things as they are, breaking them down to their lowest, basest components. And he doesn't flinch. Neither does Adiga, as he takes the reader on a ride through the lives of the forgotten people. He looks at India from the practical, unsentimental view of someone at the bottom rung of the ladder. And what he sees is not pretty.

If you are looking for a balanced view on caste relations in India, how it got here, how liberal ideas are creating progress in the status quo and what remains to be done, you are reading the wrong book. If, on the other hand, you are interested in looking at this complex nation of a thousand cultures from an almost anti-Bollywood perspective, make Adiga your guide. Here is my guarantee - it will be a short few hours (because the book flies), and you will find yourself alternately laughing out loud and grimacing from literary equivalents of kicks to the groin.

If it is only to hear the original voice of Balram Halwai (and by extension, of Aravind Adiga), read this book!

Outliers: A creditable addition to Malcolm Gladwell's oeuvre

Let's hand it to Malcolm Gladwell. His books make a definite contribution to the way we think about the world around us. It is not research paper material by any means, but Gladwell finds a way to enter the public conversation. I thought The Tipping Point was brilliant. But then I found Blink only halfway-decent (more on that in a minute). So for me, Outliers was kind of a last shot. I went in expecting to not like the book too much ("Here's another author who had one great book in him, but is continuing to milk his base though he hasn't has much interesting to say since"). I admit it - Outliers has brought me back from the brink.

The question the book explores is this - What makes success? Why are some people wildly successful and others with arguably similar capabilities aren't? Is there such a thing as an entirely 'self-made' success? The book argues that if we care to look beyond the superficial, stories of successes are much more complicated than over-simplified romantic narrations make them out to be.

In a very broad sense, Outliers claims that there are two categories of factors that are often overlooked in understanding success - Opportunity (i.e. the successful just happen to have received an opportunity that others with similar ability did not); and Legacy (i.e. there is something in the cultural, ethnic and racial background of successful people that happens to be well suited to their field).

There is nothing earth-shattering about either claim, and I don't think anyone would care to seriously disagree with them. But in their exploration, Gladwell unearths some truly remarkable anecdotes. Consider this:

If you look at the roster of players of the Canadian junior hockey league, we find that they are dominated by players born in the months of Jan-Mar. (a) The numbers are remarkably striking and consistent year on year; and (b) There is no obvious reason why people born in particular months should be better hockey players. Here is Gladwell's resolution of the mystery: For every age group, the league has a cutoff date for enrolment, and it is Jan 1. So in every age group, the kids born in the early part of the year are the oldest kids in that group! And when they are really young, being 9 months ahead developmentally makes a lot of difference. They are better coordinated and physically able than their 'peers', get recognized by scouts early, get more training and investment, and over time, actually become better.

It's the kind of anecdote that Gladwell is best at. And he has tens of these in the book. It makes you smile and go 'Ahh!'. In my case, it made me think - My daughter is July born, and her school enrolment cutoff is September. So she falls in the disadvantaged group, being meaningfully younger than some of her classmates. I wonder what that means for her ability to keep up with the rest of her class ...

Or consider this - If you make a list of which colleges the last 25 Nobel prize winning scientists in the US went to, what do you expect to see? Do you think you are going to see a list dominated by Harvard, Stanford, MIT? If you do, you are going to be disappointed. Similarly, if you were to take a group of smart people and rank order them by their IQ, do you expect to see the 'smartest' among them, i.e. the ones with the highest IQ, to be the Nobel laureates? Not true. Gladwell makes the claim that do exceedingly well in science, you need to be smart enough, but beyond that, a higher IQ is not what you need. You need creativity, street sense, hard work, luck ... many things beyond just IQ.

For a final example, consider this - Say we look at a list of the 75 richest people of all time. We find this strange fact - 14 out of these 75 people are born in the US within a span of 9 years of each other! Rockefeller, Carnegie, Gould, Field, J.P.Morgan ... 14 supremely rich individuals - all born between 1931 and 1940. The story of why, is really interesting. Suffice it to say that it is some version of 'right place, right time'. Gladwell calls the group 'demographically lucky', which I think is a great phrase. And that makes me think - I wonder what would be the long term performance of the cohort getting out of college in 2008-2009.

It is clear that Gladwell is the king of interesting anecdotes. But that was precisely what put me off in reading Blink. At some point, a book needs to be more than a collection of interesting anecdotes. To me, Blink was never able to be that. And some of that criticism is valid with Outliers too. It is not obvious to me that Gladwell is a rigorous social scientist. I read his (tremendously entertaining) anecdotes, and I don't come out thinking "This proves conclusively that the success story can only be attributed to X". The feeling of mild skepticism is only increased by the fact that Gladwell never shares an anecdote that contradicts his contention, or one that doesn't quite fit neatly into his storyline. And there are times when you read anecdotes like the ones suggesting 'right time, right place' and go - "OK, this is certainly interesting and entertaining. But profound? I don't think so."

For all those faults, I cannot deny this - I am sure to find myself refering to concepts or stories from the book many times in the future, just because they are so interesting, and make such common-sense points. That is how Gladwell creates influence - by becoming part of the popular conversation. I know he is going to succeed with me on that front. How about you?

The golden sands of Keela-Wee!

"If you were a child in India in the 1980s, you worshipped at the altar of Indrajal comics!" - Old jungle saying.

Have you read the adventures of Phantom, the ghost who walks? What about Mandrake the magician? Or Bahadur? Or Flash Gordon (though I never liked that guy very much)? Oh how I miss those weekly editions of Indrajal comics delivered to my house! With fantastic tales of beloved characters, overtones that might be vaguely frowned upon in the PC culture of today, and alluring promises of adventures to expect the next week! I haven't read one in years ...

Or I should say, I hadn't. Until today! A friend of Brick and Rope told me about The Comic Project a few weeks back. TCP is a comics blog where the blogger (bless his soul!) has scanned a couple of hundred old Indrajal comics and made it available freely to all for viewing and download. I downloaded the CDisplay tool (also available on the site), and had a blast reading Phantom's adventure, The Emperor's Dream.

I love this site! What do you think?

Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee)

When J.M. Coetzee was awarded the Nobel prize in 2003, the Nobel committee spoke of one of the (relatively few) recurring themes in his writing - "... the downward spiralling journeys he considers necessary for the salvation of his characters. His protagonists are overwhelmed by the urge to sink but paradoxically derive strength from being stripped of all external dignity." That pretty much sums up David Lurie, the central character in Disgrace.

The novel invites us in with one of the great openings I have read in recent times - 'For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well.' The 'he' in question is David Lurie, a professor of languages and communications, in post-apartheid Cape Town. We are invited to witness as his passion overcomes the meek protestations of his better judgment and he gets into an affair with a student (and not just any student ...). What follows is a personal train-wreck made all the more bizarre by the self-destructive behavior of the person at the center of it. David leaves Cape Town, and goes to live with his daughter in the countryside. But the downward spiral has only just begun.

I do not know much about racial relations in South Africa. And I can only vaguely guess at how radical it must be to get to the other side of an apartheid past. Disgrace, tracing the small, rather inconsequential life of a minor scholar, was, for me, an education in the complex realities of multi-racial coexistence in a post-racist society. This is a book of racial nuance, a book that is thoughtful without being heavy.

Coetzee's greatest asset is his sentence construction. He builds a grand story from the most delicate, short sentences. The simplicity reels you in, and you are lost. 'Ageing is not a graceful business', he says early in the book, 'A clearing of the decks, at least, so that one can turn one's mind to the proper business of the old: preparing to die.' Talking about why someone of his age might be attracted to, and have an affair with a young (too young!) girl, here is what he says - talking nominally to his communications class about Wordsworth - 'As sense-organs reach the limit of their powers, their light begins to go out. Yet at the moment of expiry, that light leaps up one last time like a candle-flame, giving us a glimpse of the invisible.' And then when the unfortunate affair gets to its predictably bad outcome and the harrassment forms make an appearance - 'The deed is done. Two names on the page, his and hers, side by side. Two in a bed, lovers no longer, but foes.' How do you not to fall in love with writing that can come up with this?

As David's life has a change of pace going from Cape Town to Salem, the storytelling grows slower, and more langorous, but never descends into floweriness or indulgence. The literary father, absorbed in things like the difference between 'burned' and 'burnt' moves in with his earthy daughter and her animal loving friends (dignity of animals - another recurring theme with Coetzee I am told), and the relationship is never easy. As the downward spiral continues, David is brought face to face with mortality - and powerlessness. 'His pleasure in living has been snuffed out. Like a leaf on a stream, life a puffball on a breeze, he has begun to float towards his end.' Acknowledging to a believer his own lack of faith, he asks 'Is it enough for God, do you think, that I live in disgrace without term?'

Maybe there are authors out there who can make a few sparse words do so much. But there can't be that many. Coetzee is in top form in Disgrace. He creates the literary equivalent of painting Birth of Venus with your four-year old's crayons. And he has won a fan for life.

The return of depression economics - Paul Krugman

As you walk down the aisle of a bookstore, you see some books that aren't quite topical. And you see some that are. Sometimes, just sometimes, you see a book that is topical in so many different ways that you have no choice but to pick it up and read it. "The return of depression economics - And the crisis of 2008" falls in this last category.

The D-word has been much in the news recently. And any book that claims to unlock the economic lessons from the dark days of the 30s, is going to register pretty highly on my radar right now. Then there is the sub-title "- And the crisis of 2008" (which was added to the title of this book originally published in 1999, as it was re-printed this year). Makes it officially one of the first books on these turbulent times. Finally, there is the author. Paul Krugman recently received the 2008 Nobel prize in economics. Which makes him hot. Or lukewarm. After all, he is just an economist. They don't even have a real Nobel prize. "The Sveriges Riksbank prize in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel" ... whatever.

Anyway, there you have it then - a perfect trifecta of reasons why to read the book. Now let us go through all of Brick and Rope's reasons why you would be disappointed if you read "Depression Economics" only for its contemporaneousness.

First off, this book isn't really about the Depression. (I realize it doesn't claim to be. But thinking that it is would be an undertandable mistake.) It is about Depression Economics - prevailing theories among econnomists today on how Depression-like economic conditions can be averted. Let me summarize it for you in two phrases - monetary loosening, and fiscal stimulus. There you have it. You have that part of the book covered now. I found a couple of interesting nuggets on those, to be fair. There is a really simple example of a baby-sitting co-op which Krugman uses as a miniature version of an economy, and that demonstrates how we could have recessions even if there is absolutely nothing wrong with the 'fundamentals' of the system. Readers of other books by Krugman might already remember this, because this is one of his favorite illustrations. And it is a good one. On the fiscal stimulus piece, what I found most interesting was Krugman's belief that when an economy is entering deep recession, and monetary loosening is by itself turning out to be insufficient, one shouldn't overthink fiscal stimulus. Paraphrasing Keynes, Krugman writes 'Let the government borrow money and use the funds to finance public investment projects - if possible to good purpose, but that is a secondary consideration - and thereby provide jobs, which will make people more willing to spend, which will generate still more jobs, and so on.'

This is also not a book about the crisis of 2008. The said crisis makes its first real appearance in the last 30 pages of the book. So if you walked into this aisle looking for a book that will explain what happened last year and why we are all in the doghouse right now ... keep walking, 'cos this ain't it.

So on to the third part of our trifecta - Mr. Krugman himself. Economists aren't often seen as a particularly polarizing lot. They are supposed to be factual, scholarly, deadpan, serious ... in other words, boring. Krugman is some of those things, but he is sure not boring. With his extremly high output over the last few years, he has also become something of a polarizing figure among the politically active. (After all, this is an economist with a blog called Conscience of a liberal) So if you don't quite follow his political persuasion, you might not necessarily like what he has to say here.

With all these caveats, let me now tell you what I did like -

Depression Economics has a very good review of some of the economic crises in different parts of the world over the last few decades. I liked to read about Latin American currency crises, the Asian crash, and Japan's 'growth recession'. I loved the anecdote on the attack on Hong Kong dollar by hedge funds ... and the HK government's unexpectedly brave fightback. Krugman's assertion that the Asian and Latin American crises were 'warnings ignored' go somewhat unbacked by direct evidence, but they were illuminating to read about nonetheless.

Krugman also makes the point in the book that one of the things that has changed in recent times is the emergence of 'shadow banks' - institutions doing very banking like activity, but that are not counted as banks, and are much less regulated. This is something that Jamie Dimon of JPM Chase for example has been saying for a while now. In Krugman's words (talking about 2008) - 'The crisis , for the most part, hasn't involved problems with deregulated institutions that took new risks. Instead, it has involved risks taken by institutions that were never regulated in the first place'.

Finally, (let me admit it) I liked that roast of Alan Greenspan. Krugman is clearly no fan of the Oracle. He has an entire chapter dedicated to 'Greenspan's bubbles', which he starts with listing all the adulatory and awe-struck titles that have been associated with Greenspan over the times - including Time magazines 'senior member of the Committee to Save the World'. (You can almost picture Krugman shaking his head as he is writing this). Then he goes after most things Greenspan. He rants about Greenspan's inaction against the 'irrational exuberance' he famously christened. He offers much of the credit for the benign economic environment under Greenspan to the previous Fed chief Paul Volcker. And he creates this new identity for the Maestro - 'the Fed Chairman holds what I believe is a unique record among central bankers: he presided over not one but two enormous asset bubbles, first in stocks, then in housing.' More pithily - 'Greenspan succeeded by replacing the stock bubble by the housing bubble'.

Gather around folks - ECONOMIST-FIGHT!!!

Atul Gawande: check

Here's more from the 'guess-whose-name-came-up' department.

I blogged a few weeks back about my favorite reads in 2008. One of my favorites was a book by Atul Gawande, the doctor who can write (oh so well!). The book had convinced me that Dr. Gawande had the hands of a surgeon and the heart of a writer. Turns out, he also has the mind of a time-and-motion scientist.

A recent article in the Washington Post cites our good Dr. Gawande as the chief researcher on a study about reducing complications and patient deaths in surgeries. And what is the magic answer that seems to reduce inpatient deaths by as much as 40%? A time-and-motion scientist in the late 19th century had a good chance of getting this one right - checklists! Dr. Gawande and team, based on detailed data from 7600 patients across eight countries, make the claim that complications and patient death are often avoidable if only doctors and nurses would make detailed check-lists of basic activities they need to do before and during a surgery, and don't feel embarrassed about using these memory joggers.

Makes me wonder - If checklists can make you 40% better at something as complicated as cutting open a human body, how come I keep hearing that decisions in my (much more mundane) industry are 'too complex' to have a good use of checklists? Are we really as good in the 'neural networks' of our minds as we think we are?