Scaly-breasted Munia (Lonchura punctulata punctulata)

 Lonchura punctulata punctulata

 

Wire-tailed Swallow - (Hirundo smithii filifera)

 Hirundo smithii filifera

 

Chasing Selene - Super Blood Moon

 

Isaac Newton by James Gleick

 

Isaac Newton by James Gleick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The book laid to rest the myth of the apple falling on Newton's head. The apocryphal story of his dog named Diamond accidentally knocking over a lit candle and setting fire to his papers is just that - apocryphal.
The acrimonious debate about who first discovered calculus still persists. Newton was first but did not publish. Leibniz published his work first and his notations came to be universally accepted and not Newton's.

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Red-vented Bulbul - (Pycnonotus cafer)

(Pycnonotus cafer)

 

Book Review - Moustache by S. Hareesh

Moustache by S. Hareesh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A wacky, whimsical, hilarious – essentially Carrollian, yarn. Casually cruel and scatological, with malevolent sprites, akin to The Bone Clocks, sentient flora and other other-worldly entities populating the narrative. Suspend your belief and enjoy the fantasy world in the swampy regions of south Kerala, accurately brought across by the translator.
A pickled sardine in its salty grave feels guilty of leading its kin into the nets of a fisherman; the dead trunk of a coconut tree repays a kind deed done to it during its life; even a flame is imbued with life

A wind, eternal, since the time of the lake and even before… agitated the lamp. The flame tried to break free from the wick and slanted away, momentarily detaching itself, only to come scurrying back, panicked to stick to it.

Boats, getting the opportunity, yield to their procreative instinct

Boats, devoid of their owners, had freed themselves from their moorings and lay catching the sun in the middle of the lake, mating unconcerned, with other boats. Some came back, satiated after the adventure…

The hilarious bits are interspersed with hatred and the harsh savagery of man against women, animals and nature

Preacher Saheb…hated the people of the land, especially the women. He considered them wretched creatures with dirt under their fingernails, crusted nostrils, and matted hair hiding lice that sauntered on to their faces from time to time. They hid away their mud-darkened bodies during their menstrual periods, using dried banana leaves to soak up the blood. They emanated a stink like duck enclosures. Their breasts were dry, backsides narrow, heels caked with mud, and their bloodless faces had a stunned look. Their rheumy eyes were half-closed, ears leaked from infections, and toes oozed from ringworm

Yet this white man had no compunction in having sex with native women, yielding mongrels

Preacher Saheb imagined that the fragrance of frankincense was emanating from the room where Theyamma was imprisoned…

There is a face-off with Death, temporal travel, an encyclopaedic description of the fauna and plants of that marshy region and much more.

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Book Review: The Quiet American by Graham Greene

The Quiet American by Graham Greene
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The eternal-triangle played out in the backdrop of the killing fields of Indo-China. The American involvement is beginning in this region with this “Quiet American” going about his clandestine business of imparting training and materiel to the underground rebel movement. The author’s description of various aspects of war makes graphic reading. Here is the deathly silence after a fiery conflict:

Everything was quiet, except for the flop and crackle of the burning stalls. I could hear a Senegalese sentry on the river’s edge shift his stance

A river of death

The canal was full of bodies: I am reminded now of an Irish stew containing too much meat. The bodies overlapped: one head, seal-grey, and anonymous as a convict with a shaven scalp, stuck up out of the water like a buoy. There was no blood: I suppose it had flowed away a long time ago. I have no idea how many there were: they must have been caught in a cross-fire…

The mind-numbing dreariness

So much of the war is sitting around and doing nothing, waiting for somebody else. With no guarantee of the amount of time you have left it doesn’t seem worth starting even a train of thought.

This book is supposed to have inspired le Carré’s inclusion of the Indo-china interlude in his Smiley trilogy.

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