Simple ways to remember India's lat long

Simple Ways to Remember India's Latitudes and Longitudes:

1. India lies above the Equator and to the right of the Prime Meridian. Therefore, it's better to measure the latitudes in degrees north and the longitudes in degrees east.

2. The northernmost latitude of India is 37.6° North, and the southernmost is 8.4° North. The difference is 37.6 - 8.4 = 29.2.

3. The westernmost longitude of India is 68.7° East, and the easternmost is 97.25° East. The difference is 97.25 - 68.7 = 28.55.

3a. So, if you round the two differences, both will give you approximately 29.

4. Trick to remember 37.6: 37.6 is considered the human body temperature above which we call it a fever. Since it's quite cold in northern India, going outside India is like risking a fever :-) Hence, India is optimally located below 37.6°.

5. Trick to remember 8.4: 8 AM to 4 PM are typically the office working hours.

6. Trick to remember 68.7: The reverse of 68.7 is 78.6 or 786. 786 is a holy number for Muslims. To the west of India, we have Muslim countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and others. So, at India's western border - which ends at 68.7° - the number gets reversed and becomes 786.

7. Trick to remember 97.25: .25 means 1/4. There is a rule about leap years: add 1 day every 4 years, except if it's divisible by 100 and not by 400. This results in 97 leap days over a period of 400 years. Thus, 97 and .25 are related in that way.

Sindhi Poem Original

अम्मा ड़ी अम्मा,

अच फुल्को डे। 

बाबा ड़े बाबा, 

अच धड़को डे। 

वे गालाए,

किथे ती वनीं।

हल घुमाये,

किथे वें हली। 

Kaalkoot review

Inspired imitation is the highest form of compliment one can pay to the creator - someone.

This is the modified quote I cooked up to say that Kaalkoot is the compliment paid by the TVF world(Arunabh Kumar, Sumit Saxena, Gopal Dutt) to Anurag Kashyap(AK) universe. To take it even backwards, AK universe originated from Ram Gopal Varma(RGV) universe with the added spices of Indian mythology.

RGV (re?)started the trend of showing realistic violence in Indian cinema - both verbal and physical - as opposed to the typically prevalent artificial violence. While RGV focused on the gangsters of Mumbai and South India, AK & associates branched out and made it more north Indian and more mythological. Gulaal, Paatal Lok, Sacred games and what not.

In parallel we have the growth of TVF - by and for engineering college kids primarily. In TVF world - protagonist and most of the characters are highly likely to be upper caste Hindus - mostly Brahmin or Baniya. And that trend continues in Kaalkoot with Vijay Varma as a Brahmin. He also dons a backpack like a college/coaching student.

That aside, it is definitely worth a watch. I enjoyed all episodes except the last. And as usual for any web series, climax is very hard to get right.

Vijay Varma for me is Irrfan Khan reincarnate. He is the closest in terms of weaving the Irrfan magic. One complaint I had with Irrfan was that he departed too early. Here are my prayers for VV's long life as I don't want to miss what he will be able to conjure up in the next decades.

Some similarities with Paatal Lok are hard to miss. There Hathoda Tyagi's sisters underwent sexual violence and were teased with "Aapne jo taang uthakar di". Here Ravi's sister underwent similar violence and teased with "ek baar bhaiya ne zabardasti li phir usne marzi se di". 

Even the name "Kaalkoot" reminds me of "Chitrakoot" where Hathoda tyhai hailed from. Then there is this song "Hum kya batayein bhaiya kaisi raat Hui" which reminds me of lyrics of "Sheher" from Gulaal - "Aye ek waqt ki baat bataye, Ek waqt ki, Jab sheher hamara so gayo tho, Wo raaj gajab ki".

And then the love interest of Ravi is a female with epilepsy issues who is willing to have sex with him to "get rid of all her fears" while the love interest of Sardar Khan in Wasseypur also had epilepsy and wanted to have sex to cure it.

So I would say Kaalkoot is a crossover between TVF and AK universe - and a good one. Reminds me of another crossover going on in Bollywood right now. For me Luv Ranjan is to Kartik Aaryan what Imtiaz Ali is to Ranbir Kapoor. Recently they switched sides. Imtiaz Ali did Love Aaj Kal with Kartik and Luv Ranjan did Tu Jhoothi main makkar with Ranbir. I didn't watch the former but later was a lot of fun.

Hindi Poem Original

#original

राम भी सो गए, 

माधव कहीं खो गए।  

राधा जो बुन रही,

गीत कहीं गुम गए।  

किन्नर संभावना,

हतप्रभ वीरांगना।  

नित् नित् नृत्यांगना, 

नाचे मोरे आंगना।  

टेढ़ा मेढ़ा आंगना,

फिर भी मोहे नाचना। 

किसको है ढूंढना,

कैसे उसे बूझना। 

कब तक खंगालना,

कैसे निभाहना। 

Ret Samadhi Hangover?

Ret Samadhi(Tomb of sand) won Booker in 2022. It's a story of an Indian woman crossing over to Pakistan for love.

Now in 2023 we see 2 women crossing border(Seema Haider/Anju) for love. Is it only women who have such courage? Or men know that they won't get the similar sympathetic treatment?

Shaikpet Sarai 20 May 2023

Kabir Tolani's blog

https://kabirtolani.blogspot.com/

Year 2022 in Books

1. Ret Samadhi Shree, Geetanjali
2. Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It Reeves, Richard V. 

3. Carrie Soto Is Back Carrie Reid, Taylor Jenkins
4. The Art Of Conjuring Alternate Realities: How Information Warfare Shapes Your World Singh, Shivam Shankar
5. Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths from the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs Hoffman, Reid
6. Cut Like Wound Nair, Anita
7. Tejo Tungabhadra: Tributaries Of Time Vasudhendra
8. Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK Kuper, Simon
9. The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention Baron-Cohen, Simon
10. Don't Forget 2004: Advertising Secrets of an Impossible Election Victory Sundar, Jayshree
11. Behind A Sports Champion Mothukuri, Sreekar
12. The Disruptor: How Vishwanath Pratap Singh Shook India Mukerji, Debashish
13. Fiercely Female: The Dutee Chand Story Misra, Sundeep

Summary:
1 Hindi book, 12 English.
4 fiction, 9 non-fiction.

8 by Indian authors, 4 by non-Indian.
Out of 4 fiction books, 3 had a transgender character(Ret Samadhi,Cut Like Wound,Tejo Tungbhadra - all Indian writers), 1 had a lesbian character(Carrie Soto is Back).
3 books on politics, 2 on sports.

Reviews:
Tejo Tungbhadra - By far the best book I have read in a long time. Amazing historical fiction. It has one grand plot and two great sub plots. Author, being Indian and Kannadiga, has done a good job of sketching the local characters and somewhat managed to detail out the Portugese ones. It's fast paced and has a great storyline. I recently came to know that its original Kannada version is a huge hit.

One big problem though: its Kindle version is a very shoddy piece of work despite being available since October 2022(or even earlier). There are numerous complaining Amazon reviews and author/translator themselves are aware of it but are incapable/unwilling to get it fixed.

Ret Samadhi - I came to know this when its English translation got the Booker. I chose to read the original Hindi version. I don't even remember when was the last time I read a Hindi book. My memory of Hindi literature is that it primarily deals with poor/downtrodden strata of society and the heart becomes very heavy reading that. Nothing wrong with that. At the same time we need some non-sorry stories as well. Though this book tackles a story which could have definitely been told in a heart-rending way, the author chose an upbeat tone. It's a book of hope.

Coming to the construction of the book, often the smallest significant unit of a book is a chapter or even a paragraph. But here it's a sentence. Many times I had to read and re-read a sentence to understand it. Due to that it was a very slow read initially.
And yet, every sentence has a tightness to it as if it will start oscillating the moment your sight touches it.

Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths from the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs - I believe when it comes to writing about startups, we are in the post hagiographic era. Startups are no longer the entities to be worshipped blindly but to be treated as grey things as most of the worldly stuff is. Sadly, this book doesn't get it. It's dreary and dumb and seemingly written to cement existing friendships. Among the tech/startup books which I have read, only Eric Schmidt's books are worse.

Carrie soto is back - I believe it's a very good book to read for someone who hasn't read a lot of sports books(whether fiction or not). If you have read a lot of sports stuff, you may still appreciate it but not much.

Of Boys and Men  - Best non-fiction book I have read this year. Very fast paced. Anecdotal as well as data-heavy. Tackles a very important subject. I really wish a similar book exists which analyses data from India.