2 States

This Sunday I bought the "2 States: The Story of My Marriage" the new book by Chetan Bhagat. I was expecting better from him this time compared to his last two misadventures, but to my surprise the book was much much better !

Yes, one sort of sequel to his first book, this book is full of dialoguebaji, real life experience that you dont put in words but Chetan Bhagat can, a very little masala(this was the expectation anyway!), exploration on Tamil vs Punjabi culture, what the big banks have to offer at workplace, etc etc.

The story starts when an IIMA boy, Krish, falls in love with an extra ordinary beautiful IIMA girl Ananya(extra ordinary by IIMA standards). Krish is son of a retired Punjabi armyman and hardcore punjabi housewife. Ananya is from a Purest of Pure Iyer Brahmin cast in Tamilnadu.

Dont care about the end, whether it is happy ending or sad ending. Chetan has made sure that the path upto the ending is exciting. (Read:its not the destination that matters, its the journey.) Its the story of the same boy who has his stunts during IITD in 'Five Point Someone' and is now participating in the second at IIMA. Arguably the story line resembles Chetan's own life, as his real life wife Anusha is from Tamilnadu and himself from Delhi.

Overall its a very good book. I would give 4.5 out of 5 to this.*

*About the rating trust-ability of my rating, 'Five point someone' has been given 5/5, 'One night @ call centre': 3/5 and 'Three Mistakes': 2.5/5.

Diwali Photographer

After the digital camera has made it very easy to shoot as many pictures as you want with almost no expense, I realized that I too have a 'hobby' for photography. Adding to this, many of my friends asked me how I took one of the photo I posted on orkut.

Result is this post.


Here is how:

To take the photo you need: one candle, one sparkler, one digital camera and one person to take the picture (provided that you want to be in the photo rather than taking it.)

For the camera setting, keep the camera in shutter-priority mode and make the shutter speed low. For the above photo it was 1/4 second.

Now light the sparkler in the middle. (The usual practice is to light at the tip, but we need double ring effect, right?) This will cause the sparkler to have 2 burning ends starting from middle and going away from eachother.

Now band the metal end of the sparkler a little so that it is easy to 'rotate' the sparkler in your hand. Now rotate it and ask the camera man to take few pictures. Select the best of them to show your friends.

Few more photos taken during diwali vacation.