Marathon Man

Just finished reading "Marathon Man" by Bill Rodgers otherwise known as Boston Billy who won the Boston and New York Marathons 4 times each in the late 70s. Boston Billy has personally autographed this book which was given to my dear friend Bhasker Desai who had ran at this year i.e. 2013 Boston Marathon. Bhasker finished the race and was in the medical tent when the bomb blast took place.

It is a very enchanting and enthralling book with a throbbing narrative in collaboration with Mathew Shepatin. Basically it is an account of his early life and his Boston marathon experience of 1975. The narrative is very interesting in the sense that each chapter starts with his Boston 1975 progress during the race and the later part of the chapter devotes to flashback to his early life as a college student, running with Amby Burfoot who is his original inspiration, his "conscientious objector" status during the Vietnam war, his degree at special education, struggle at getting a job etc. He was a natural born runner with a great capacity for hard work and a body which could take any amount of hard work with very little injuries. The realisation that he could be a top notch marathon runner came to him only during a race with Amby Burfoot in which he raced alongside the great Amby for about 15 miles of a 20 mile race. The seeds of inspiration which Amby sowed in him made him take up competitive racing including marathons. Boston Billy alongwith Frank Shorter, Amby Burfoot and Jeff Galloway were the pioneers of long distance running first in America which then spread to other cities in the world which has since then grown exponentially. His latter attempts at Montreal Olympics of 1976 and thereafter founding a successful running business alongwith his college buddies makes for a good story. It is an excellent book, very inspirational, very nice story of an easygoing hardworking American who loves running dearly. 

The Way Through the Woods

Just finished reading "The Way Through the Woods" by Colin Dexter, my first one of him. It is an Inspector Morse mystery. It is a mystery about a sudden disappearance of a Swedish maiden in England but the case comes to life fully one year after her exit for whatever reasons. Dexter has a different style of writing compared to others such as Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle etc. in the sense that he keeps on dropping some hints here and there by weaving in and out of the story by juxtaposing with riddles etc. The plot keeps the reader in suspense and I like his interplay with relevant quotes at the beginning of each chapter. I would say that Dexter is a "dexterous" writer in that sense.  

Jolly LLB

Sunday evening family time was spent watching Jolly LLB on the computer. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant movie - solid script, keeps flowing, not too much silly dialogues, only a couple of songs, no item songs, no steamy sex scenes, and most importantly, and this is the clincher - Arshad Warsi does not overact. In fact, i suspect he may be secretly congratulating himself on his life's best work. The story is a takeoff on the actual episode of Nanda BMW hit and run case which happened in 1999 in Gurgaon and the case dragged on and on for about twenty years before the Supreme court affirmed the Delhi high court decision to reduce the sentence of the main culprit Mr. Sanjeev Nanda to two years from five years which was awarded to a Delhi trail court. Surprisingly, the Delhi High Court rationale for reducing the sentence was ostensibly that the accused could not have knowledge that his rash driving could cause tragedy to others. A news channel article on this matter can be accessed here And I always thought that the moment a person gets a driving license he is supposed to know that he should not drive rashly. Alternating between parody and reality the movie gives a resounding slap to the present judicial system in the country and to the investigation agencies' corruption and shoddy work. Boman Irani has acted well which is his forte and Saurabh Shukla delivers moment of pure brilliance. I guess the movie must have been made on a modest budget and it surely is a sleeper hit for the producers. 

Shootout at Wadala

Finally saw the movie "Shootout at Wadala" and then read the real story of Manya Surve on Wikipedia. too view the link click here The director has taken too much liberty with the real story, only some portions of the movie matches. The saving grace of the movie is Kangna Ranaut who has acted beautifully and also looks beautiful in sepia tinged 80s camera work. I thought some of our older gangsta movies like Parinda, Satya, Shool, Gangajal were much better than this one. There is not much content in the movie and for that reason the director keeps on doing slo-mos too frequently. Rubberband jaise kicha hai story ko!! John Abraham is sorely disappointing - he can't act to save his life. Shootout series without Vivek Oberoi??? – he is the man!!

Turbaned Tornado

This book "Turbaned Tornado" is a biography of the famous Indian marathoner who ran a marathon at 100 years, Fauja Singh. The writer Kushwant Singh is not the same famous Indian journalist and writer of the same name. It is a nice narrative of the early life of Fauja Singh, how he travelled to London after the death of his loving wife and started running marathons at the age of 89 when most of us would rather be more comfortable walking with a stick!! Fauja is an indomitable spirit and his farmers' genes help him in becoming a rare sportsman and brand ambassador more famous than some sportspersons three or four generations younger than him. His timing of 5.20 hours at the age of 94 is the stuff made of legends. Fauja Singh is truly a great sportsman of India and reading his biography is very refreshing.  

14 Hours - an Insider's Account of the 26/11 Attack

Just finished reading this book by Ankur Chawla - I had expected a gripping saga of the greatest attack on Indian soil since independence but not totally disappointed. He has tried his best to give a nice narrative account of his experience inside the Taj Hotel and succeeded also to some extent. It is obviously his first attempt at writing a book and being a young hotelier I will give full credit to his composure during the worst travail of his life. There are some genuine attempts at humour and it works very well. 

Business Responsibility Reports

SEBI is blindly following the SEC model for reporting and disclosures by corporates in India. Apparently they have mandated Business Responsibility Reports by top 100 companies as per market capitalization. These companies have to give BRRs if their financial years closes after 31st December 2012, which means practically all companies in the 2012-13 financial year bracket. There is a format for the BRRs and recently they have released FAQs on the subject. The earlier circular of august 2012 wherein SEBI introduced the concept of BRRs is available at this link here and the recent faqs is available here

The format is an inclusive format and I am sure many companies would give more information than is mandated and it is more in the nature of a check box kind of report. Some of the information asked for could very well be confidential information so it remains to be seen how corporates deal with it.

Some of the principles enunciated are very vague for eg. Principle 4 talks about disadvantaged, marginalised & vulnerable stakeholders. Really who are these kind of stake holders. There needs to be clarity in this regard. I feel they have blindly copied from somewhere without ascertaining whether these apply to the Indian market.

Annexure 2 of the August 2012 circular is critical as it enumerates the broad based principles on which the BRR is based. These are very ideal principles which if adopted truly by the corporates will lead to very little litigation and cause for concern. But unfair competion, disparaging advertisement, squatting on domain names, human rights and child rights abuses, trampling of employee rights are more the norm rather than the exception.

These principles should be adopted by all corporates in India and not only companies but all persons doing businesses in all forms whether as companies, or partnerships or LLPs etc.