Swan Peak: A book review

Montana, Murder, Music, Mystery, Malevolence - these words in a nutshell describe what the book Swan Peak by James Lee Burke is about. I have been wanting to write book reviews since a long time but this book made me do it. It is a shame I managed to miss James Lee Burke all these years. Of all the thrillers I have read in past, this story stands out for these reasons - research, layout of the plot, injection of suspense at the right places, description of the landscapes and best of all character portrayal.

The Plot

The story starts around Swan Lake in Montana where our protagonist Dave Robicheaux, his wife Molly and his friend Clete Purcel are vacationing in the summers. The friends' intention is to fish the trout found in the lakes in northern Montana. But alas, it is obvious that trouble follows the duo every where they go. When ghosts and people from the past start haunting these two ex-Army men, it is only imperative that they must confront the dangers because it is not in their nature to let go. Especially when two coeds are murdered in the hills followed by a film producer burnt alive. At this point in time, it looks the book is nothing but filmy but James Lee has made it easy for the reader to indulge and agree that these events can be of common nature. The family of the Wellstone brothers, filthy rich and having estates in Texas and Montana are wanting to keep the good men away from the mishaps. It is soon discovered that the Wellstones' story has loose ends that can easily be tied to all these murders including one of the ministers, Rev Sonny Click, who preaches on behalf of the Wellstone Ministries. To make the plot more interesting and intriguing, Jimmy Dale Greenwood enters the story - an ex-con musician who was involved with Jamie Sue Wellstone, wife of Leslie Wellstone, when they sung together in the rodeo circuit. Jimmy Dale is in hiding after escaping a contract prison and almost killing one of the prison's founding members - Troyce Nix. Now Troyce has followed Jimmy Dale to Montana and gets involved in the story. All of the characters except the Wellstones end up unearthing secrets about the murders that confuse Dave and Clete further. But when the two friends start calling in favors from friends down south, they come to know a great deal of evil that the Wellstones can be tied to. They also find out interesting details about one of the drivers of Wellstones and then start tying up the pieces together. They would later discover a startling fact that will take Clete Purcell down the memory lane only to be haunted by what happened in a plane crash in Western Montana years ago. Although the story ends in a regular 'good wins over evil' mood, the narration by Dave has been out of this world.

Recommendation

I have finished reading two additional Dave Robicheaux's novels written by James Lee Burke and would recommend all of them - The Glass Rainbow and Creole Belle in addition to Swan Peak. They are not just about murders or mysteries or Dave or Clete, but life in general and how being truthful to oneself can often be dangerous and risky. They also talk about overcoming fears that haunt you, of murky scams on one hand and crystal clear blue waters of the Key West on the other. The articulation of locations, characters and history is so vivid it is like taking a amazingly interesting lecture in Social Sciences and Human Psychology all in one book. And believe me, you will at times say 'enough!' but still want to read more. I felt sad and lonely after each of the novels came to an end only to yearn for more of James Lee Burke's works. I recommend reading through just the epilogue of the latest novel I finished reading, Creole Belle, and you will know what am talking about. It is a journey you will want to do. It is a walkabout you have always wanted to earn.

My blog from December 2031

It was a few months back when we completed two decades after Watson had defeated it's human competitors. That was a hint of what humanity was going to see in the coming years. People started demanding Watson be brought into common lives for common 'good' and IBM had to agree. Governments sanctioned and sponsored further research and Watson's offsprings and their several 'types' are now being used in every walk of our lives. This took a long time ofcourse but a very little time for technology and science to start living our lives.

One such Watson-kind is right now typing away on my iAssist using Bluebrain, a descendant of the yesteryear technology Bluetooth, which can listen to thoughts, interpret and convert them into text. Well, proofing is not required since it never writes down anyhing which is not meant to be posted. Once approved, again by just a thought signal, the blog will soon be posted after Government agents approve the content. These are not the Men in Black any more, in fact not even men but only software agents which work 24/7 under the purview of the Global Watson Alliance. Don't even get me started on how many are out there.

Today was the day in 2011, I saw on youtube how Watson had won Jeopardy and always wondered if it was just another super computer or a start of a scary future. Well, I can definitely say it is more of the latter than former. The present is scary for people who have lived the 20th century, but business as usual for children and the young of today. We used to take pride in the ownership of 3D HD TVs, Kinects and iPhones. Now, TVs are a thing of the past because what you want to watch is in a device that fits in your pocket, weighs a couple ounces but can project what your brain wants to 'watch', streaming it down through various sources from the 'univ'. The cloud became 'sky' and later the 'univ' because of its vastness. We now don't use devices such as computers and Kinects but only several light-weight gadgets specialized to perform tasks of our daily lives.

I can talk more of gadgets but let me now share something more interesting. Toothbrushes and toothpaste have been a part of our lives since a long time. They were first used in the form of wooden twigs but the concept remained the same when we used plastic brushes or even the vibrating ones from Philips Sonicare series. This morning, I used a 'toothbrush' but I didnt have to hold it and neither use a paste. I sprayed the new Nanocare, closed my mouth, opened it after 2 minutes, breathed out and in a few times and voila! ... my teeth were as bright as light. My mouth felt fresh as mint and Nanocare guarantees it will remain so for 36 hours at stretch. Now, Nanocare is a spray consisting of intelligent nano particles which enter my mouth, attack the germs, work on my enamel, break down clinging food into nano sized particles, and after two minutes, wait for my first breath out. That is when all of the intelligent particles come out of my mouth, a few of the mint flavored ones staying behind for 36 hours, find their way to the drain and bid me farewell. After a few free trials, I have ordered for a lifetime supply for only 1000 bucks.

Well, I can go on telling you about the changes life has gone through over the past few years but let us take a break for now. Hope you get this post soon although that is an oxymoron in itself since am sending this blog back in time to give away the knowledge of the inventions of tomorrow. Well, now that we have been successful in sending digital messages back and forth in time, time travel for humans is just around the corner.

Dedicated to KURT WESTON

I came across this article on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/06/03/blindphoto.irpt/index.html and fell in love with Kurt's fight against AIDS along with the works of art he has brought out. The monochrome photographs reveal Kurt's struggle and irritation whereas the colored ones are sure to brighten up your day. At the end of it all, I had to dedicate this poem to him:

The VISIONary

Seeing is believing they say
So I believe in what he sees
Through disturbance and irritation and darkness
Jumps out his work in glory, silencing society's tease.

His vision is gone, his body struggles
The life we all crib about has left him marooned
The art he creates through tinsel and foam
Brings him relief, he's no more cocooned.

Monochrome or not, he has shown us colors
From the darkness of night to spring's daylight
The black and whites give us matter to contemplate on
While the colored ones make the heart take a flight.

When the going gets tough the tough get going
And he went tougher when life was unfair
Making us wonder if survival of the fittest is a lie
When all he had was darkness to share.

Tyger Tyger!!

Well, the caption clearly proclaims what I am going to write about. And readers, don't get carried away by the spelling of "TYGER" since this is how William Blake spelled it in his famous poem on tigers.

Alright, without beating around the bush let us come to the point. The TIGER is a magnificent specie which is significant not only from aspects of ecological balance but also because it is a spectacular creation of The Almighty. But sadly, population of this amazing animal has come down to a great extent in India. Isn't it a shame even talking about 'remaining' tigers? This word itself suggests the plight of affairs where all efforts to revive this specie failed big time. We will have to value the existence of this animal else it will be too late to be sorry.

Poaching and devegetation are the main causes why the animal kingdom is suffering. We easily accept the fact that human population is ever-growing and always in need of more space and more natural resources. In the attempt of getting 'more' of everything, we have been disturbing the flora and fauna around us. Several species of both the plant and animal kingdom have vanished without even being talked about. But the least we can do is understand. Understanding the situation will help us being more responsible towards our surroundings. Proper monitoring of increasing rural population - especially near forests - and making villagers self-sufficient will keep them from threatening wild life. Poachers cannot enter reserved forests without a helping hand from inside, which to our belief is very easy to avoid given a proper chain of command and ownership of these issues. Awareness to geo-political and social events can be another cue here. For instance, the year 2010 is the Year of the Tiger in China and other lands with Chinese population. This may have an adverse effect on the population of tiger because of the increase in demand of tiger skin, nails, teeth, etc. We should proudly participate in celebrations of the Year of the Tiger only when tigers in India and the World are saved from extinction at all costs.

Let us resolve to make all efforts in significantly bringing up the population of tigers in India from 1411. Do visit http://www.saveourtigers.com/JoinTheRoar.php and contribute in various ways to save this magnificent creation of God. As William Blake rightly says, "...What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?..."

Dashavatar OR Bas-avatar

Browsing Internet at blasting high speeds has its own advantages and majority of the educated population of the world at least knows about it. So I would not let you get bored by advocating for it. But one big wide disadvantage is availability of mis-informational crap in the form of streaming movies, which online movie channels often advertise as "without buffering".

Me and my wife got this golden opportunity to watch Dashavatar ("Dasha" from now), a highly talked-about flick which was a dream project of Kamal Hasan (forgive me if I have misspelled his oh-so-numerologically-correct name). If films like Vettaiyadu Vilayadu held matter, Dasha nullifies them with a high content of anti-matter. Result: Annihilation. Well, let me now list down the minuses of Dasha(in increasing order of severity):

1. A Tamil movie dubbed in Hindi has always maintained a low success rate and Dasha proves it once again.

2. Asin, who is one of the very few good looking actresses of South Indian film industry, is nothing but an irritating chatter-box in Dasha. Her role is an annoying one, where not only she adds no value to the film but also increases the noise pollution levels of your surroundings. Not sure if the dubbing artist got over excited or was it the dialogue writer's creativity that led her to do this. Did I tell you Dasha's dialogues were written by Kamal himself?

3. Extremely poor animation which has been added to serve no purpose makes this flick a torture technique. I remember making my friends go under such torture when we watched Bobby Deol starrer "Bichchu" in Bangalore. Kamal's affiliation towards such animation started with Hey Ram where anything and anyone that Ram the protagonist imagines metamorphizes into digitally created flowers, thorns and guns. Similar animations were tried to please the public in Abhay, another multi-role movie from Kamal, but in vain. 

4. The story starts with our protagonist giving a lecture in a stadium about spirituality and religion, strays away to a CIA led chase of a USA-based Indian scientist and ends up in a Tsunami. Please don't ask about the connections among the three.

5. Kamal experiments again with a multi-role act which is uncalled for and irritated me to the core. Why would such a fine actor want to play George W Bush, a Chinese martial arts master and a Punjabi pop singer among others? May be to do justice to the film's title rather than to it's story. He did a commendable job in Chachi 420 but lacks vision and has no mission in enacting such roles as in Dasha. Not to mention, the make-up was visible and was not wisely done.

6. To conclude, neither the movie convey any message to the viewer nor does it entertain in any way. Given a chance, I would recommend Kamal to break it into a collection of short stories and present it on the small screen in the form of a tele soap. The physical disconnect between each story may make the viewer interested a bit but as far as other aspects of acting, animation, dialogs and screen-writing go, I take pride in taking no guarantees.

I think it is time Kamal thinks about cinema as a channel to reach out to people. And may God give him the strength to keep his creative thinking to himself. This way he can enjoy his dreams on his own and not make non-critics like me criticize the Mahanayak. Bas avatar bas!!

C++ ('C' for 'Coding')

This post is one of my replies in www.codinghorror.com under the topic: "Does Writing Code Matter?"

I fully agree with Jeff Atwood in what he says. My perception of what Mr.Atwood has referred to is this: A programmer can be a better and "important" human being (which includes him being a better and important programmer) by exercising skills other than coding. I remember my first few days of learning Java. Classes, Objects, polymorphism, what not. It did not occur to me how to start coding a simple class with the main method. I was blank. All hopes vanished and I knowingly quit the idea of coding in Java. That was 7 years ago. Now I have got over 6 years of experience in Java with a Sun certification. All I need to tell is that although I quit Java, I continued communicating with and understanding people and objects around me. The next day I found myself trying to think whether the person I talked to the last day was an object. Yes it was. An object named Shantanu. Did it have properties which matched mine? Disappointingly yes, but yes. That made a class out of us, Human. The rest is history. When a programmer or an aspirant talks to people, socializes, he learns and makes people learn and the growth he attains is 360degree. He not only acquires knowledge but creates knowledge. The forum has seen people denying Jeff's suggestion that "we spend less time coding and more time developing skills in other areas that complement our coding skills". He never asked us to forget coding. Come on, that's our bread and butter, at least for me it is. I perceive that he is pointing towards a Paradigm Shift. A thinking which would enable us to be smart developers, being smart would help us cut on our development times, times that we could spend in closer-to-life activities, times which our parents, wives, children would love to spend with us, times which would help us to socialize and be a better and important human. The cycle goes on buddy, the cycle goes on.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia strikes me quite frequently. It begins from the senses getting activated. The eyes see something familiar, the ears hear familiar bells, the nose smells familiar scents, the skin feels a familiar air, either or all of the above.
Specially, listening to music makes some part of my brain recall times when this piece was first heard. And then, from I do not know where, I find myself in the past. Since I have travelled places in a short span of my career, a particular kind of music makes me relate to each of these places. To start with, Bangalore makes me recall fun, frolic, pubs, movies, and studies too. Yes, I was meant to study in Bangalore for a year or so but studies skidded to the bottom of my priority list. No, I did not do it knowingly. For if I had done it knowingly, it would have been a topic of regret now. It is not. That was one of the best times I have ever had since childhood. And now I find myself remembering those times with pride. Come on, life is not just about fulfilling a mission, it is also about friendship, having fun, realizing your mistakes after you have had fun and above all, concentrating on your mission when thse above said distractions exist altogether. What say?