Book Review: The Anarchy by William Dalrymple

After reading this book, I felt this is how history should be told. This is not only the story about the rise of East India Company but a few hundred other stories too. This is the story of disintegration of Mughal kingdom. This is the story of Robert Clive taking bigger risks and luck favoring him. This is the story of how rashness ruined Bengal Nawab Siraj-ud Daula. This is the story of company losing many of the early battles but fighting back to win finally. This is the story how internal fights within Indian kingdoms gave advantage to European traders in becoming kingmakers. This is the story of Portugese and French companies inability to outsmart the English. This is the story of Tipu. This is the story of Maratha's. All happening in parallel and influencing each other.

William Dalrymple unravels the history of how a British company with initial aim of trading came to India and changed its history. He references lots of the works and weaves the story for us to understand the events in chronological order and the cause and effect with ease. He gets into the personality and mindset of the major people involved and how their approaches made or unmade the fortunes for them.

Once I began to read, I could not put it down. My understanding of history got lot enriched with this read. I would recommend this to all history lovers and also to those readers in general who want to understand how kingdoms are made and unmade.

Meditation music: Bed time companion

I have been exploring music to play during bed time for the last couple of years. I began with binaural beats, then moved on to simple 'Om' chanting and 'Gayatri mantra'. They are helpful to steady your mind, slow down mental activity and then slip to sleep. My exploration got me to instrumental music too. And by chance, I came across the instrumental music played in the Inner Engineering meditation program conducted by Sadhguru. This particular music (link given below) became my favorite. I saw that it is effective with my family too. They would fall asleep before this music would end.

This instrumental music dominated by flute evokes varieties of emotions while calming down the mind and slowly bringing it to a standstill. I have been listening to this for few months already but I still feel fresh emotions and an active mind with deeper silence. I thought of sharing my finding with you. Try it once, you would like it too.

Books I read in 2019

I don't write review of all the books I read, I do that only when I find the book interesting, something new I could learn from, or when it makes a great impression which is worth writing a review and sharing on this blog. But I do read lots of books anyway as I am a compulsive reader. Here is the list of the books I did read this year.

1. The hard thing about hard thing by Ben Horowitz
2. The laws of human nature, War by Robert Greene
3. HDFC Bank 2.0 by Tamal Bandyopadhay
4. The happiness curve by Jonathan Rauch
5. Why I stopped wearing my socks by Alok Kejrival
6. Inner Engineering by Sadhguru
7. The laws of spirit world by Khorshed Bhavangri
8. Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee
9. Quiet by Susan Cain
10. Hatha Yoga Pradipika by Swami Muktibodananda
11. Nine lives by William Dalrymple
12. Executive presence by Sylvia Ann Hewlett
13. Enlightened by Sadhguru
14. Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey
15. So good they can't ignore you by Cal Newport
16. Bandhan by Tamal Bandyopadhay
17. The third pillar by Raghuram Rajan
18. Brand custodian by Mukun Rajan
19. Originals by Adam Grant
20. The 100 year life by Lynda Gratton
21. The courage to be disliked by Ichiro Kshimi
22. 21 lessons for 21st century by Yuval Harari
23. Home Deus by Yuval Harari

24. Adiyogi by Sadhguru

25. India unbound by Gurucharan Das

26. Leaders eat last by Simon Sinek

27. Essentialism by Greg Mckeown

28. Atomic Habits by James Clear

29. Kundalini Tantra by Swami Satyananda Saraswati

30. Small Fry by Lisa Jobs

31. Sure ways to self realization by Swami Satyananda Saraswati

32. Give and take by Adam Grant

33. Trillion dollar coach by Eric Schmidt

34. Barking up the wrong tree by Eric Barker

35. The charisma myth by Olivia Fox Cabane

36. The selfish gene by Richard Dawkins

37. Who cheats and why by Robin Banerjee

38. The Signal and the noise by Nate Silver

39. The subtle art of not giving a f*ck by Mark Manson

40. Deep work by Cal Newport

41. Inside C Suite by Jayaram Eswaran

42. Indigo Story by Shelly V

43. Bad Blood by John Carreyou

44. This is Marketing by Seth Godin

45. Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella

46. Genome by Matt Ridley

47. Sapiens by Yuval Harari

48. Antifragile by Nassim Taleb

You can see that most were Business/Leadership books followed by spirituality and science research and sparingly fiction in between.

The one's by Robert Greene, I have read, re-read multiple times and found deeper meanings with each read. Books by Yuval Harari do command re-reading multiple times. Those books on the subject of micro-biology, genome has caught my interest and I might explore the subject further.

There were few other books that I did buy but could not read them completely as I lost interest in between and those did not make it to this list.

I plan to publish this list for the next year as well as it provides a good reference and I can track my changing interests too.

The last decade 2010-2019: Personal life milestones

• 2010: My first son Prateek was born
• 2011 to 2012: Nothing significant I could remember
• 2013: Started this blog
• 2014: Building the house in Bangalore
• 2015: New home!
• 2016: My second son Puneet was born. Family photo looks so good now.

• 2017: Life as usual?
• 2018: Changed the job
• 2019: Lost my mother (My mother had voted with me just 2 weeks before she had passed away)

Farewell 2019. Welcome 2020!

Looking back how my personal life unfolded throughout the year that is coming to an end, I find this was a difficult year. A slow start and things looking as usual did not remain so. Losing my mother in the month of May was a shock still undigested. Career did not go anywhere throughout the year. I did not do well as investor too. It has been an year of disappointments on most fronts. Few experiences were scary too. August to October months put me in a bad health. Some of the days in that time I even wondered if my life was under threat but the issues were simple and got sorted out too. It appeared like health is getting restored but becoming sick again at the end of the year and becoming bedridden for two weeks is not a pleasant experience either. But I see few rays of hopes in the year ahead. I welcome it.