The Unconsoled : Book Review

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Well, I was looking to read something different and someone suggested me to read “The Unconsoled” by Kazuo Ishiguro. By all definition, this was different from most of what I have read till date beside Kafka. The storyline is simple. A pianist comes to a small town for a performance and to help the resident to regain its past cultural glory. He encountered different people of the town trapped in their own problem looking up to him as savior and in the process, he also realizes his own relationship with the town. In the end, he realizes that the town is as good as it can be and perhaps left town without any performance or contribution.

He keeps drifting between reality and imagination. The beauty of Mr. Kauzo Ishiguro writing is that you will not realize that you have read 50 pages and the main character is still in the lift of hotel and conversing with the porter. The transformation of the well-mannered hotel manager working tirelessly for the good of town to a selfish lowly man working for his some vanity is so smooth and flawless that you will end up marveling at the mastery of author over words. Like a skillful painter, author painted the canvas beautifully with words with different shades of emotions in the background.

Mr. Kauzo Ishiguro doesn’t need any event or twist in the story to change the mood from happy to sad. His story will gently nudge you from one emotion to other. All you need to do is to flow with the stream. You might find it absurd that our hero is simply drifting from one place to another and often losing the track of time. You might resist that why the hero of the story is started for something and end up doing something else. You might wonder if it is real or just imagination.

The authors take to a journey where you cannot anticipate what will happen. You will read 100 pages without realizing in the story timeline its just five minutes. After finishing the novel I was pleasantly surprised that I read that much.

At last, My suggestion is if you want to read something different and allow yourself to drift lazily with the flow then this is the good book to read.

Happy reading.




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Analytics and Life

Human beings bestowed by the intelligence, sometimes tend to overuse it. We overestimate causality to that extent that we sometimes tend to fit patterns or try to find reason for something that is complete random. The world is so overwhelmed with data and data analytics tools that usually we succeed in finding the reasons for random event as well. Due to advent of technology and enormous computing power at our disposal, we can search pattern even in the complete random event. It seems like that humans are so arrogant of their reason that they are not able to accept that there might be some event that may have no reason at all. This is something call as fooled by randomness these days. The real challenge is not to be blinded by Socratian Logic. I guess Logic is bit overrated.

We in data analytics call it ‘noise’. One of the major challenges of modern day data analytics is separation of information from the noise. For any robust model data sanity is of paramount importance. If the data selected for the modeling is wrong the model is bound to fail. Usually analyst defines the scope of the project that how much the model can predict and for what time horizon. There we tend to be very cautious and predicts with disclaimer. The funny thing is in business problem we are very aware that we are doing prediction based on historic data, which might go wrong if data pattern changes or say situation changes.

But in real life we are so confident of ourselves that we do prediction with conviction that too on the basis of insufficient data/experiences. We are somehow so blinded or arrogant that we extrapolate our prediction on entirely different situations. We don’t bother to see whether our experiences are even worth using or not .In technical term we don’t care that the sample being used for analysis is information or noise.

The whole point is to understand that everything in universe needs not to have reason behind it. Something might be accidental but yet have profound impact on our lives. I am not saying that we cannot predict at all. Of course, we can but with some probability of failure as well and under the constrain that situation will remain similar to what we have experienced in past. I guess this much humbleness is not an unjustified expectation from the predictors of humanity.

Why We Need Justice for Ruchika?

I was following the Ruchika Molestation case quite closely after the famous crooked smile of Mr. Rathore was splashed in the media and ultimately led to the uproar in the nation for the justice for Ruchika. When I myself followed the whole story I felt the outrage against the ballant misuse of power and the helplessness against the injustice. The whole sequence where Mr Rathore used the whole police machinery to break a helpless family sent shiver through my spines. I guess this was the feeling that united the whole nation against Mr. Rathore.

Our fathers and grandfathers were the generation when India was struggling for freedom or new country adjusting with new place in free world. They were the generation who had a collective aim to build a new country. They fought for the freedom and after that they worked with the purpose to build a great nation. After that a time came during 70s and 80s when corruption, unemployment were at its peak. That was the time of famous angry young man era. The youth felt like cheated and betrayed by their politicians. The dream of great nation handed to them by Nehru and Gandhi was not fulfilled. He woke up in the era of unemployment, feminine, poverty and corruption. After that from 90s country realized and adjusted with the changing world. Our market was opened and we started taking on the world’s competition head-on. We didn’t do badly either. There was a time when we were seen as economically failed society and now is the time when world want us to take lead to pull it out of the economic mess.

We are the generation who are sure of ourselves. We are competing with the international players and beating them in their games. We are free of the mental slavery. We are working with US and European countries and realizing they are not better then us. We are the proud Indian with confidence that we can excel in anything that we venture out to do. The feeling of helplessness is entirely new to us. Even the thought of it is outrageous for me. This is the reason why nation woke up to call of Ruchika’s family. It was not for the sake of Ruchika. It was for us. The justice imparted reinstate my faith that we live in a society where everyone is equal and provided with equal opportunity. All is equal in eyes of justice. Someone may play with it for the time being but not for ever.

This feeling that we live in true democratic society is the greatest achievement of free India. Every society needs some collective aim. The aim of our generation is to build a great nation. When you work for a purpose you productivity increases manifold. The government should realize this that they should also safeguard the spirit of nation. They should not let this spirit die. The events like Mumbai attack, attack on Indian parliament impact the morale of the citizen. The preparators of these crimes should not go unpunished. The country should fight and retaliates when required against these terrorists. This help in building the character of the nation.

Today after reading the news of justice imparted to Ruchika I felt a huge relief as if my faith, my value system has got revalidated. I have a similar feeling like the one, which I have when I listen to our nation anthem in attention pose. I feel proud to be Indian and the part of society where Ruchikas can get get justice against mighty like Rathores.

Jai Hind

Random

From past few days I am reading a lot of books on philosophy. Books mainly about life, meaning of life, purpose of life, aim of life and even how to attain the ultimate aim of life. I won’t name the books, as some of them are really famous and might offend people. But I suppose, its not important what book is all about and what actually author wants to convey. The important thing is what reader understood and what thoughts the book invokes. Being a mathematician the first thing that came to my mind is to check the validity of the questions. I started with is really our life have a meaning or if we really need a meaning to our life. What is wrong if our life is complete random and shaped by the chances rather than destiny. We all think that we are the blessed children of the lord. Actually we should consider the possibility that we might be the unwanted children of the God and we must learn to live with that.

Now the first thing that came to my mind is there really any purpose of life. People talk all the time about meaning and planning for the life but comfortably ignore that life might be simply an accident. It might be possible that we are not sent in the world with some great mission. At least statistically we can assume this much. The real question is why from centuries we are running behind some questions which might not have any solutions.

The man is not agile or has the strength of other animal. He had to cooperate and collaborate in order to survive. The only strength that human possessed is intelligence. But intelligence can’t be shared or collaborated. In animal community the law and order is restored or maintained by the strength. The power is exercised by the brute force . But in case of human the intelligence had to be reined in to establish the order.Every thought is required to be in same direction. But the thought or intelligence is not the thing that can be controlled by the force. There is nothing like collective intelligence. No discipline can be ever forced on the mind of people. In order to establish a social order the leader of our society decided that its easier to kill the creative minds rather than motivating the people to think for the same purpose or collective aim. So to control the minds of the people, the leaders and preachers of this society decided to commit a fraud. They created things that were intangible and vague. They created these things to make people intellectually drained. They created these unsolvable riddles to prove that every man is worthless and incapable as far as thinking is concerned. They made human to think that they are inadequate and hence forced them to submit to them. They created the theories like aim of life and make people to pursue it. They made people to seek something that don’t exist at all. They created a false purpose of life and gave false ego to every living being. Everybody is special and has an aim in life and people need to find that out. This is good enough to keep him engaged and occupy his mind for the life. At the end he will feel that he is not good enough and then he will willfully submit to the system. He will obey the system and will do anything that will be asked of him. The funda is to beak the spirit of man; his freethinking spirit by proving that he is incapable and inadequate. Make him so dependent on the others that he starts thinking in terms of others. He values, sense of right or wrong, successes all will be measured in the eyes of others. He will start living for the others and others for different others. In this vicious circle no one will ever live for himself. These unhappy people will run to priests and guru to seek happiness and peace. These people then can be united in the name of religion or ideals and then this group with no independent thinking can be broken to be ruled. These are the groups that formed the great civilization.

Purpose of life

These days I am thinking a lot about the purpose of life. The more I think more I realize that actually life is purposeless. There is nothing like the purpose or destination of life. There is nothing predetermined thing or the thing what we say as fate

. The course of Life depends upon circumstances. It is not shaped by any fate, its only result of chances and the different decisions which we make at different point of life. In Fightclub there is one dialogue that BradPitt says to Edward Norton Losing all hopes is freedom. That thing really stuck me that actually hoping and expectation are real reason of all frustration. I started thinking that why actually I am unhappy when I can easily fulfill my all minimum or sufficient requirements, I couldn’t find the reason of my unhappiness. This type of unhappiness is more dangerous because for unhappiness aroused due to unfulfilment of something has remedy but in my case I was not able to figure out the source of my unhappiness. I think that I am unhappy only because I am not happy. Now the thing is, is there anything between happy or unhappy? I mean what is the state when we are nor happy neither unhappy. When I was pondering on this then I start thinking about what actually meant by Nirvana or enlightenment. What actually someone meant that he is above sadness or happiness? What is that state where emotion does not affect you? In quest of that search I read a lot of literature related to that. In Osho’s discourse of philosophy, it was said in that state we feel ‘anand’ .The general English word for this is happiness but he said it’s not exactly happiness because this state is beyond emotions. It is state of complete zero when person loses everything even his being or awareness of being. It’s the same state where people reach by meditation .Well I got confused and couldn’t make out anything out of these heavy theories. My problem is very simple that how one can keep himself happy. One thing that I am sure that for me the purpose of life is to be happy and to remain in peace. I really agree with all romantics philosopher that life is to be enjoyed .So now my search is narrowed down to the search of means of enjoyment. I don’t want to get entangle in complex theories of Nirvana or other things. I don’t believe that our future is already decided. I believe that our future is in our hand so it is we who decide how we gonna live our life. So from today onward I will try to find means which can really make me happy.

New found passion

This day I am very busy at work. So I get very little time to do the “my own” thinking which I enjoy most. Life is so circumvent that the work will kills me with its monotonocity alleviates its own given pain by keeping me engage in itself. Even then I somehow manage to squeeze time between my pressing engagements for the fun. These days I have started enjoying biking. I simply love to ride. I don’t need the picturesque setting of mountains or soothing breezes of hilltop or peaceful moment at sea beaches. I only need road and space on it to drive fast really fast. I like the trill of speed. The air in my hair, its beat against my chest. I don’t need any company me and my bike is sufficient. Though I already have two minor accidents but that in fact has added my passion for biking. The only thing changed is that I am more cautious and careful. I love to drive fast but safe also. This newly found passion help me to get more close to nature. I never bothered to look beyond my town. But now I am driving to steep hills, through the forests etc. For the first time in my life I was moved by the nature. It’s like finding a new but very dear relation. For the first time I was amazed with the magnanimity of mountains, for the first time I stopped to take a breadth of fresh air and to savior that breadth for ever in my memories. For the first time I understood what makes heart of those poet moving who have written so much about nature. I am gradually falling in love with the nature. Earlier I used to go to Forum or other shopping malls in Bangalore but now I am always looking out for places outside Bangalore so that I can drive fast and can have moment with nature as well. One thing that I loved most about Bangalore is that its location is so perfect that within 100 km range around it there are so many places to go. Once you are out of Bangalore city you are driving along mountains or trees. I have seen enough of mountains and forests now I want to go to some see beach. I want to drive to some peaceful sea beach and sleep there in peace for two three days and do “my own “thinking. Its not like that I am loner or I don’t like company but when I am in these types of places I need to be alone to imbibe maximum of these. I like to get lost in thought, to sit idly .keep staring at far away thing which most of my friends find weird but that’s how I enjoy it. Let’s see when I can do this.