Shantaram

Author: Gregory David Roberts

Googy Rating: 2.5 / 5

Gist:

A tattered soul imprisoned in Australia without any real reason escapes the years of imprisonment in the jail and wanders around the world as a wanted fugitive in search of peace, in search of freedom and finds that India is the birthplace of his longings. The author falls in love with the life in Bombay and a resident foreigner like him Karla.

He gets to know the day to day habits of the drug dealings and other black market business. He joins with Bombay don Abdul kader khan who treats him like his son. He understands many aspects of life under the guidance of the great don and becomes trained in many illegal activities. Then he goes along with his mentor to the war front in Afghanistan to know about the true incidents that made him what he is, a member of the greatest mafia gang in Bombay still the most wanted one in the world.

Review:

The book is full of philosophical thoughts which are really interesting but slows down the pace of the story to a great extent. The author’s description of Bombay as a place for any person who can do any kind of job is simply great. The characters are well dealt with. My favorite character in the novel is Prabakar, a great and loyal friend of the author who greets everyone with a big smile. The most impressive nature about Prabakar is that he is very loyal to everyone and makes everyone happy around him with his warm welcome and his love and affection. Author’s visit to Prabakar’s village is an enjoyable part. It’s really difficult for a foreigner to adapt to the customs of the village and live among the villagers for nearly 6 months. The slums in Bombay are well explained and the conditions of the people are expressed in an apt manner. Author learns to believe and care for people during his life in slum. The little medical centre done by the author is really touching. Quasim Ali, the leader of the slum though comes in the novel less has impressed me with the way he handles the things in the slum. The author has made great effort in explaining the procedures of black market trading in Bombay. The novel is very informative in many ways. The chats between kader khan and the author is more of philosophical thoughts where the author writes about the importance of freedom, the way of doing wrong things for right reasons and many more which are really good to read but some may feel it very boring. Karla is described as a very beautiful, brilliant and a very mysterious girl who has been regretting her child hood. But I don’t think her child hood is so bad. I did not like her character very much. According to me she has betrayed herself with the wrong and lame reasons. The author’s travel to Afghanistan during the war is really boring and very long. The author’s experience in the jail of Arthur Road is really hard to read with those tortures and beatings. The author dislikes the thought that he had lost his freedom again for unmentioned reasons and waits for his revenge. The concept of ‘sapna’ killings was really nice. It had good motive in the start which went out of control. The words of the author as such ‘” You can change your life completely with a single thought or single act of love”. I think these lines contains lot more meaning that it really specifies.

Bottom line: Just philosophical.

With love

Googy.

CTS Interview..

Hi ppl.. I would like to share my experience in interview among you guys so that it may be useful to you.

First there was the aptitude test. The aptitude test was somewhat easy to crack if you are good in reasoning skills.

The aptitude test contained three parts

1. Quantitative(20 questions- 25 minutes)

This part had the usual sums but you don’t have to do any calculations. All the problems can be easily solved without the use of pen and paper. But there was no time. Dont waste your time in solving the questions which would take time. Just finish the problems you could solve it easily in the first 15 minutes.
Then go to the toughest questions.There was a Venn diagram questions involving 4 Venn diagrams and it was very very difficult.

2. Attention to detail( Analytical reasoning)(25 questions-25minutes)
This part was really very very easy. I was confident in answering the questions. It had 10 questions from syllogism and other 10 from reverse syllogism. It had finding the odd figure out of the given figures and finding the next figure from the next figure.
Be strong in this part guys. It is the part which could boost up your marks.

3. Verbal (25 questions-20 minutes)
Finding the incorrect part from a given sentence was difficult. It took most of my time.
There were two reading comprehensions. My advise is not to touch the reading comprehension till the end. It would eat up all your time.
Jumbled sentences were very easy.

Interview

This was really fun. All the people waiting to go inside were all tensed. Be cool always. Think of a nice comedy. Be relaxed.
The students who came outside finishing their interview were really making me tensed. I started asking others the answers for those unknown questions.
I was the last person in my college to be interviewed.
There were two hr’s. Both were strong in technical which i learnt from other students belonging to my panel.

It was the usual start with tell me about yourself.
I answered it but they started giving me the silent treatment.
So I started with my strengths.I mentioned one of my strengths as not getting distracted easily. You will know later why i specifically mentioned this to you.
They still stared at me. I finished with “That’s it sir. Is there anything more I could tell?”.

They started going through my marks and asked me why i have scored less in my fourth and fifth semester.
I told them some reasonable answer. They seemed to be satisfied with my answer.

One of the hr asked my what is the difference between the flip flop and latch.
I was glad that I knew the answer very well and started telling him while the other person was
distracting me by nodding a ‘no’ with his head. He was checking whether I was giving him any attention to him. But i looked at him first and started to have a concentrated eye contact with the hr who asked me the question and answered confidently. This was the part i feel they were impressed about me.

Then one of them asked me to write the truth table of jk flip flop. I told him correctly. He asked me to draw the circuit of the jk flip flop.
While i was drawing the other hr asked me some general questions like who is the chief minister of karnataka and which party does he belong to.
I answered them correctly but to my surprise the guy asked me ” You told that you will not be easily be distracted but i distracted you very easily”
I answered him ” Whatever the distraction is I am still doing my job right. Then what is the problem”
He didnt speak for the rest of the interview.

Then I answered a few questions from data structures. Those were basics like what are the different types of data structures and I had to explain some of them.

He asked me a puzzle. I told all types of solution to the puzzle but he kept on saying that your approach is very simple and they asked for a complex approach.
I got stressed out and said ” That was what i could think of sir. Can you give me the answer to this ?”. He mentioned that he would say it at last but did not tell till the end.

He asked me another puzzle. It was bit difficult and i was not able to get an approach for that. He itself gave me the answer. The answer was very logical and I had to get away with a smile.

Then finally he asked me for any questions.
I asked whether it was necessary to learn java before entering the company but he replied with a careless no and said Thank You for spending your time with us.

I thought I won’t be selected till the results came. I am happy to get in CTS. This is my first step towards the greater part of life.

Lets wait and see what happens next.

With love

Googy.

The Kite Runner: Book Review

The kite runner

Author: Khaled Hosseini

Googy rating: 4/5

Synopsis:

Amir famous for his petty novels in America who is of Afghan origin is seeking to redeem himself for the sins he had performed for his childhood servant friend by getting an unexpected call from his father’s best friend in his death bed. He goes into the wildness of the war camp in Afghanistan and Pakistan to save himself from his depressing thoughts of his betrayal to the best of friends, his loyal kite runner.

Review:

Khaled Hosseini, the Afghan author has donated the literary world one of the best story every laid in the best possible manner in his very first book. Hats off…The story mainly revolves around Afghanistan where the author has given a lot of description about the beauty of the Afghanistan and its people. He has also explained the day to day life of Afghan refugees in America with much effort though it does not make a stand near the beauties of Afghanistan. He provided a story which may catch you by your throat to make you read it fully. The story line is quite different and the way it has been put it can make you cry for the two main characters. The story describes the innocent nature of children and the way they enjoy their sinless life. Specifically the way the author has described about the kite flying competition makes you return to your childhood. The eagerness of a motherless boy striving for his father’s kindness and respect is described in the apt manner as it should be. The whole book is not sober as there are some really exciting things in the story which makes you enjoy your time spent in the book. The only thing I felt unclear about the story is the coincidence of the military general in the Afghanistan war camp and the end of story. I didn’t like the end of story much but many of my friends said it was really good.

Bottom line: A really good book to spend time in.

Free ebook link:http://www.megashare.com/57967

With love

Googy.

What did life provide me with?………

Hmmm………Since this is my first step to ♥blogging world♥ i thought of blabbering(really blabbering) something…… so people dont worry bout this..

What did life provide me with?. It is one of the most important questions that we should answer and get ourself contended..
you could see that i have the word contended specifically because whatever the life provides us we should be really proud to accept it and enjoy it rather than keep complaining about it very often.
But complaining is a common behaviour among humans and even i wont regret it because it helps to reduce your grieveness(hope this is the correct word).
But what does one answer to himself when the most common and complicated question about yourself arises.
It is really simple. People dont really understand that really life doesn’t give a shit about you.
It is you who is always have to learn and work throughout your life like an ass to unravel the mystery in you..
This part is not a big deal though if you really enjoy in doing your work and be good to others.
But i’m like other persons who always yearn for more though there is lot of good stuff lying around me.
This is because of the human nature to strive for more power even though people are as powerful to control their own life already.
I know that I am lot deviating from my topic so the topic is all about what the life provides me and who the hell am I to care about some jobless person(no offense meant.. ) who is reading this blog..
ok let me list out some of the best and worst of my life till date.

Firstly i was provided with such wonderful parents who cared for me in a different manner( it’s the usual scolding technique)

I was given a brother who never accepts that he doesnt know a fact and tries to blabber something about it(obviously like me).

I had such horrible schooling. Never stayed in one school for more than 2 years and the worst part is i had to shift my home to some distant part every time so it became hard for me to get any really close friends.

I blame myself sometimes for not getting any close firends in my school life which i will regret till the end.

One of my important asset is that i have the eagerness to learn new things so i am able to grasp new ideas which made me a half geek.
So i was able to score a lot in ma school days( which i think was a mistake because ma parents started to expect more from me in every stage of ma life and i am the one who would have to get a load of scolding for not achieving something high )
My parents wanted me to be the best of everything which i can never achieve and the worst part of it is that they compare me with the real achievers and i feel like shattering those guys(the achievers actually) using a laser sword used in star wars( nice movie)

In my college i should say i’m really enjoying my life.This is the time where I’m feeling like a baby who could do whatever he wants inside a big palace… Ultimately the palace also had walls to limit the expanse.

I got some really good friends. College is the place i really learnt something about life.. Until then i was nobody but now i think i can be somebody among my friends and in my life.

But nothing lasts till the end. You keep on juicing your idiotic mind of yours to do something worthy but nothing comes out of it though.
I want to become an IAS officer but lets wait and see what life has kept in store for me( sorry for it… its only me who have to work hard to store it in my hard disk)

To be satisfied with yourself try to answer this question reasonably.. But there lies an another question..
Do you think I am satisfied by this answering?……..I hope……

Hope I have made you all waste some amount of time with my nonsense stuff.

If you are really an idiotic person to like this kind of writing then wait for the next time until my diary opens.
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

With love

Googy