Havana Bay

Martin Cruz Smith is a first timer for me and I did not realise that he had written Gorky Park which was made into a movie a few years ago. Arcady Renko is a humourless Russian investigator sent to Havana to investigate the death of another little known Russian spy in a water accident. The book begins very slowly and takes even more slowness to get into the characters of the plot. There are few police people and a Cuban female investigator Ofelia all of whom don't want to investigate the Russian's death. There is a liberal sprinkling of the mistrust between Cuba and Russia in the book a kind of Cuban hate of Russia for leaving them in a lurch and sort of leaving them as holding the last communist post in the world. The plot gets bogged down repeatedly in the Cuban Russian interplay of emotions which is not dispelled despite a few more murders taking place. Smith has done a good job in slowly unfolding the plot to its conclusion in the Havana Bay but I thought the ending was a bit too abrupt. He should have allowed the emotions between Arcady and Ofelia to be taken to a logical conclusion. This was supposedly Arcady's fourth book in the series, it would be interesting to read his earlier works on Arcady and also his later works. 

Dangerous Curves

Picked up a book called "Dangerous Curves" by Peter Cheyney on a seconds books sale somewhere in Bombay, either because it was way too cheap or the it looked sorta good to read. Got down to reading it last week and was pleasantly surprised to read it - a riveting fast moving fiction with mystery suspense thrown in galore. Then I researched Peter Cheyney on the internet because i have never heard of this guy, was surprised to learn that he belonged to another era practically born in 1896 and died in 1951, relatively young just like Raymond Chandler another of my favorite. In the first few pages itself I discovered another of my favorite author James Hadley Chase in his writing. Chase who wrote many potboilers and wrote about the underdogs and the underdregs of the society has beautiful flowing narrative to his writing. This book is a Slim Callaghan mystery - that is the name of the investigator who is given the job of investigating the wayward stepson of a vivacious Thorla Riverton who is 30 years younger to her husband and whose husband is dying of complications from old age. Slim Callaghan has obviously a very disruptive style of operating which is not appreciated by Thorla Riverton and sparks fly between the two, she being attractive. Slim Callaghan being the quintessential fictional detective is able to comprehend the hidden facts as well as portend the future shape of things to come. One thing i did not like about Slim Callaghan is his excessive smoking and drinking, but what the hell, this book was written in 1939 when there were more worldly matters to be concerned than the post modern James Bondish type of fit action heroes. From this Wikipeadia entry here it seems Peter Cheyney lived the life of his fictional protagonists and died young having penned 35 novels and 150 short stories. This book is "out of print" and therefore a rare copy. Books such as these are rare to come by. Highly recommended reading for fiction fans. 

Bhag Milkha Bhag

Bhag Milkha Bhag is a biopic of a man who was the first athletic sporting hero of a newly independent India and I would say about 30 years late in the making. He gave up running in the mid 60s, Tokyo Marathon of 1964 being probably his last major championship. Bio pics were never popular in mainstream Indian cinema popularly called as Bollywood except as documentaries by the Indian government channels. It is only recently that few bio pics are being made which is closely resembling the lives of the protagonists otherwise they make movies "loosely based on somebody's life". Either ways, the directors take extreme liberty with the true content of the person's lives introducing elements that are never there in their real life. Bhag Milkha Bhag is therefore the story of Milkha Singh's life. It is also a sad story of Bollywood's obsession with sex, skin show, six packs and songs. Even if the four S were removed yet the story would have been beautiful enough for people to connect to the person's life who is venerated as a God in sporting circles in India. Of course in India any yadav, kumar and shinde who knows how to hold a bat or bowl a long hop is also venerated in a mad cricket crazy country. So the story is about his uprooting from his village in Pakistan, butchering of his parents, brother and sister in front of his own eyes and his traumatic train travel to India as an orphan where he has only his siblings to take care of him at a tender young age of 10. His early life in the village involved trekking to a school 10 kms away by going through sand dunes which must have been the major contributing factor to his athletic prowess in latter life. The narrative of the movie does not follow a linear format and therefore it juxtaposes from one situation to another. Army was where he first came into contact with running and the recognition from winning at running gave him the impetus to furiously pursue his pursuits. They allowed a few inaccuracies to creep up such as his breaking the world record in 400 metres which as per this Wikipaedia entry here does not show any such record in his name. In the movie they have depicted that he lost the 1960 Rome medal due to his angst and anguish at the loss of his parents and siblings in Pakistan but that was already erased in the Indo-Pak friendship series which took place in the mid 50s where he decimated the Pakistani athletes and extracted succour for that loss. Bollywood's obsession with six pack abs is almost delusional. Probably the movie makers think that anybody who has a body with huge muscles is a champion in every sport forgetting that every sport does not require huge bulging muscles. Why should an athlete have a sick pack abs with huge bulging muscles - They should have done their homework properly. This youtube video here shows that Milkha started off fast but started fading in the later stages of the 400 metres final in Rome Olympics - a case of tactical, strategic error rather than angst at his loss in Pakistan. The same tactical strategic errors continue to be committed by later Indian athletes such as Sriram Singh who had a devastating first lap in the 800 metres final of the 1976 Montreal Olympics only to fade to finish 7th in the race which was won by Cuba's Alberto Juantorena in a then world record time. Juantorena later acknowledged that he was able to break the world record only to the initial burst of speed by Sriram Singh. With all these inaccuracies and the formula system of Bollywood, the movie is well made with decent performances by all the actors including some bravura performance by Divya Dutta and Pawan Malhotra as the sister and coach respectively of Milkha. Sonam Kapoor as the love interest of Milkha has done a delightful cameo role. An absolutely must watch by all the youngsters of India, all athletes irrespective of whether they are runners, shooters, wresters, boxers. Too many songs perhaps elongated the movie to little more than 3 hours. Farhan Akhtar in his six pack has done a decent role as Milkha Singh.  

Value Added service - TRAI guidelines

TRAI has issued new guidelines on activation and de-activation of Value Added Services to subscribers of telecom services. The salient features of the new guidelines are:

1) VAS activation procedure to encompass all forms of Value Added Services such as WAP, SMS, Mobile-Internet, Tele-Calling etc.
2) Second consent of the subscriber is necessary before the VAS can be activated. The second consent should be on a dedicated consent gateway which is owned on a third party platform whereas the first consent is on the service providers platform. Only after receiving the second confirmation should the VAS be activated.
3) Common de-activation procedure and all de-activation to be completed in 4 hours
4) De-activation procedure to be widely published and disseminated for information to the subscribers and the general public
5) Auto Renewals to be done only after 24 hours of providing information to the subscriber about the auto renewal on SMS etc.
6) In case of wrong activation amount to be refunded within 24 hours of making the request where the VAS validity is for more than one day and where the VAS validity is less than 24 hours, then the refund should be carried out within 6 hours of the request.
7) In case of SMS mode of activation, no response time should be 60 minutes and in case no response is received within that time i.e. 60 minutes then it should be treated as "no activation required"
8) When the VAS service is activated, then immediately the de-activation number, validity of the VAS service and renewal amounts should be intimated to the consumer.

This ensures that service providers activate VAS only upon service the positive consent from the subscribers and not otherwise as hitherto, many service providers were randomly adding the VAS without taking any consent from the subscribers and creating many problems for the subscribers when the de-activation request was made.

A copy of the TRAI guidelines can be found here

Telecommunication Consumers' Education and Protection Fund

TRAI has stipulated that the excess monies collected by service providers from subscribers which were getting deposited into the Telecommunication Consumers' Education and Protection Fund and which was hitherto kept as fixed deposit only with corporation bank, can now be kept with any bank who is providing better rate of interest on these deposits. I wonder how much monies have been collected in this fund and to what purpose they have been utilising it for. Anyways, a copy of the TRAI circular can be found here

The Fate of a Man and Early Stories

The Fate of a Man by Mikhail Sholokov, the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1965 and six other short stories. All the stories are gut wrenching heart rending tales of sorrow, grieving, loss of family, sufferings due to the turmoil in Soviet Russia in the early part of the last century primarily the fight of the Cossacks against the then newly emerging Red Army. At several times during reading the stories, I had to take a break because it became extremely difficult to continue reading. The love of a father towards the children is the same whether it is in communist society or capitalist society and these were also evident in "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev. Sholokov wrote "And Quiet Flows the Don" for which he was given the Nobel Prize. "The Fate of a Man" is another masterpiece from Sholokov. 

Standardisation in Health Insurance

http://www.irda.gov.in/ADMINCMS/cms/Circulars_Layout.aspx?page=PageNo2012

IRDA has issued circular for standardisation of certain terms used in Health Insurance Policies - Some of the definitions are obviously amended definitions. Also included is the definition of Portability which means that portability of health insurance policies will be on the anvil soon. The circular is given on the link above.