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Thread: FK Readers CLUB

  1. #4181
    FK Citizen Perumthachan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by reader View Post
    Anees saliminte vanity bagh vayichitundu,didn't like it,pinne ingerde onnum vayikkan thoniyittilla...bhai nalla review itta sthithikku ithenthayalum try cheythekkam.
    oh come on my friend!
    i myself would not pick a book that i myself read & recommended... you know that...

  2. #4182
    FK Citizen Perumthachan's Avatar
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    Vikram Sarabhai: A Life - Amrita Shah

    For me, Vikram Sarabhai has always been the most distinguished Indian ever. Personally, considering the shaping of the India today, I regard him higher than the Mahatma, Tagore, Nehru, JRD Tata, Raman, Bhabha, Kurien, Kalam or any other Indian for that matter. The simple reason being he is the only one on whom the word ‘pioneer’ is most suitably decorated. Born into the ultra-rich cotton mill owning strict Jain sect following Sarabhai family in Allahabad, science was always his passion. Montessori home-schooling till matriculation followed by science graduation from Gujarat college; on Tagore’s recommendation he does his tripos in Cambridge, does doctoral research on cosmic rays under CV Raman. Studies of cosmic rays make him visit the south where he meets Mrinalini Swaminathan, an accomplished Bharatnatyam dancer. Marriage at early 20’s. Despite being involved in the thick of the Indian uprising & Gandhi being a frequent visitor at their home, he never leaned towards the freedom movement. Nehru was keen on physics which was due to his friendship with Homi Bhabha who also happened to have regards about Vikram. Over a lifetime, his pioneering efforts are immense. He started the mother-hub of science in India the Physical Research Laboratory for space, the Ahmedabad Textile Industry Research Association for his family business, the Operations Research Group the leading authority on stock market research, Sarabhai Chemicals for pharmaceutical products, Sarabhai Research Centre, Darpana an arts-&-dance institute for his wife, the IIM-A for management, the AIR for broadcasting, the Doordardhan for telecasting... and of course his greatest legacy, the TERLS (Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station) in Trivandrum. In between, Vikram gets into an affair with his wife’s friend and surprisingly both women stand by him till his death. Though he is aware that, along-with space, energy is another sector that will develop one day to create breeders & ballistic missiles, he was always against nuclear power and uphold the necessity of using science for peaceful purposes, which of course came into conflict during 1962 Indo-China & the 70’s Indo-Pak wars. Our energy programmes had huge govt. funding & flamboyance whereas our space programmes had a meagre budget & the first rocket was built inside a church building & transported on top of a cycle to the launch pad. Can’t complain because back then, the red tape made it really tough to make politicians understand that, for the development of a country rockets and satellites are more powerful than missiles. All the institutes he started are the leading ones in those fields and all whom he personally picked out are the people we admire today: Kalam, Satish Dhawan, UR Rao, Vainu Bapu (last week Manorama Sunday supplement was about him) Kasturirangan, Madhavan Nair, Nambi, K Radhakrishnan etc. His greatest ability was to encourage those working under him to reach beyond their grasp. He knew India could not afford the time & money to start everything from scratch, leapfrogging was the only option. Even before the first rocket was launched from Thumba in 1963, he was already dreaming about launching our own communication, broadcasting & educational satellites in our own launch vehicles which did happen, 5 years after his ‘mysterious’ death in Halcyon Castle at Kovalam in 1971. For me, he is the greatest Indian who ever lived. He is like the Edison of India. Always ticking with ideas way ahead of its time. It was his pioneering activities that led India through the telecommunications & broadcasting technologies that we use/abuse like anything today.

  3. #4183
    FK Citizen Perumthachan's Avatar
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    got my copy of Agnipareekshakal (അഗ്നിപരീക്ഷകള്*), the autobio of G Madhavan Nair, ISRO's first Malayalee chairman. released last week.
    completed 9 chapters... really good stuff... should definitely be included in our state syllabus...

  4. #4184
    FK Citizen Perumthachan's Avatar
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    Agnipareekshakal - G Madhavan Nair
    A gem of a book. Really insightful. It starts off with the author's birth before the formation of Kerala. About how his father's ancestral home is in Kerala today while his mother's in in today's TN. about his early love for mechanics & instruments. about his love affair. being picked on Sarabhai's open call. joining Thumba. Sounding rockets, SLV-3, ASLV, Aryabhatta, Rohini, INSAT. Especially the 11th chapter where he goes into detail about the need for 450 crore budget PSLV and the amount of hard work needed behind it. how our scientists toiled like anything for it. This book will also be liked by management guys. Lots of stuff written about handling people & getting the best out of them. about splitting the work-load and weekly assessments. especially comparing between the working styles of sarabhai, dhawan & kalam. comparing between ISRO, NASA & European styles of approach & management. there is also sufficient non-political info about the 1994 ISRO spy case involving Nambi, his works in the field of cryogenic engines; also about the Antrix-Devas deal for which the author is facing flak. Then there is lot of concerns about the breaking up of huge households into nuclear ones, the use of pesticides in our vegetable & the need to guard our forests. There are lots of inspirational stuff too, the two things that he stresses upon most are, there is no shortcut for success & that if you do something good for the first time, don't rest, work on it to make it better or everyone will think the first success was a fluke, something which he learned from kalam whom he considers his mentor.

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  6. #4185
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    the last chapter of Madhavan Nair's book dwells into his after-retirement life. the chapter before deals with kalam's death. before that, there are 4 chapters of controversies... the major chunk of it is against his successor Radhakrishnan & the Antrix-Devas deal, how radha blocked him from assuming govt. positions based on a case in which CAG Vinod Rai who initially bought up the topic laterapologies for mathematical error on his part... nair claims radhakrishnan to be either a 'chameleon' or someone suffering from multiple personality disorder... radharkishnan shut down Nair's first manned mission to space project and instead went ahead with the mangalyaan project which is basically a useless project... then there is criticism of manmohan singh, p chidambaran & UPA-2... there is heavy praise for modiji but then nair does not hide the fact that he used to frequent vhp meetings... he goes on to say that, isro had approached all state dignitaries to come forward & make use of the educational satellites, kerala under UDF rule was the state that did not bother to while Gujarat under modi used it the most... nair is also critical of our recent 104 nano satellite success story since he feels nano satellites are only for short-term & we do not have the technology to bring them back after use leading to outer space turning into a graveyard of used satellites... in short, after sea & land, man has started to pollute space too...

  7. #4186
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    The Mahabharatha Secret - Christopher C Doyle
    - sold 1 million copies in 1 year

    another Indian writer trying to be the next Dan Brown. 250 BC. Samrat Asoka is led to a cave which hides a instrument that is mentioned in a chapter of Mahabharatha. the instrument is so devastating & dangerous that Asoka does two things. one, he pulls up all the copies of Mahabharatha around the country, rewrites it leaving off that specific chapter & then burns all the existing copies. two, he forms a brotherhood of the Nine Unknown Men to guard the secret for eternity. Shift to present day. A nuclear scientist is murdered before which he sends cryptic emails to his nephew, Vijay Singh our hero. He arrives from the US & alongwith a group gets pulled into a journey that involves the edicts of Asoka, the Vimana Parva chapter of Mahabharatha, the Vaimaanika Shaastra, the LeT, Al-Qaeda, ISI and whoo... the scientific advancements of our forefeathers.

  8. #4187
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    Quote Originally Posted by Perumthachan View Post
    The Mahabharatha Secret - Christopher C Doyle
    - sold 1 million copies in 1 year

    another Indian writer trying to be the next Dan Brown. 250 BC. Samrat Asoka is led to a cave which hides a instrument that is mentioned in a chapter of Mahabharatha. the instrument is so devastating & dangerous that Asoka does two things. one, he pulls up all the copies of Mahabharatha around the country, rewrites it leaving off that specific chapter & then burns all the existing copies. two, he forms a brotherhood of the Nine Unknown Men to guard the secret for eternity. Shift to present day. A nuclear scientist is murdered before which he sends cryptic emails to his nephew, Vijay Singh our hero. He arrives from the US & alongwith a group gets pulled into a journey that involves the edicts of Asoka, the Vimana Parva chapter of Mahabharatha, the Vaimaanika Shaastra, the LeT, Al-Qaeda, ISI and whoo... the scientific advancements of our forefeathers.
    Ithil Asokante secret band oru historical fact aanu... They are keeping some hidden knowledge ennokke sruthi undu ....
    When truth is a fantasy, reality lies ..
    Na
    rayana ..
    . Narayana ...

  9. #4188
    FK Citizen Perumthachan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Naradhan View Post
    Ithil Asokante secret band oru historical fact aanu... They are keeping some hidden knowledge ennokke sruthi undu ....
    lesham far-fetched aayittaanu enikku thonniyathu... anyways undenkil thanne enthu hidden knowledge?

  10. #4189
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    Quote Originally Posted by Perumthachan View Post
    lesham far-fetched aayittaanu enikku thonniyathu... anyways undenkil thanne enthu hidden knowledge?
    Don't know... Pakshe angane oru conspiracy theory undu
    When truth is a fantasy, reality lies ..
    Na
    rayana ..
    . Narayana ...

  11. #4190
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    Quote Originally Posted by Perumthachan View Post
    lesham far-fetched aayittaanu enikku thonniyathu... anyways undenkil thanne enthu hidden knowledge?
    Don't know... Pakshe angane oru conspiracy theory undu
    When truth is a fantasy, reality lies ..
    Na
    rayana ..
    . Narayana ...

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