Aumkaar > Recent Status Updates

Looks promising

I have unwittingly walked into a full-blown academic e-lafda, and I'm ready with my popcorn

Hyperbole be excused, finishing this book feels as momentous as graduating from college, if merely because both took roughly the same amount of time.

The tendency of the Indian democracy to handsomely reward its greatest villains is uncanny. You enacted emergency? Become the PM again. Sikh massacre? Take 400+ seats. Muslim progrom? What even is PM, just be our god.

If only we were a feminist nation, IndiraG wouldn't have been robbed so blatantly of the credit of being the OG Indian villain by lightweights like Gabbar and Mogambo.

I would have finished this book by now had it counted as four books in goodreads stats.

I appreciate how each chapter is complete in itself, wrapping up whatever strand it starts. You can read one, be content, and get on with your life. No cliffhanger or cheap tricks to disturb the reader's peace.

It's like shayari in this sense where each individual sher is 'muqammal' in itself.

The recent chapters on Middle East and India-Pakistan have been much more about pure IR+politics than geopolitics. The role of geography only gets a fleeting mention.

One of the best books I have picked up this year. Much insightful, very easy to read.

The level of Maths finally ascends beyond my realm of understanding.

Nice to finally have personality portraits for the mathematical labels like Euler, Gauss, Cauchy, Legendre, Lagrange, etc; even if slightly corrupted by hearsay. The latest chapter also had a montage of female achievers in the field such as Emmy Noether and Sophie Germain of whose existence I was unaware.

It would have been the perfect maths-history book if not for the needless use of dubious facts to spice up an already exciting story.

The book started like a foggy morning: too dense to see through. It's been clearing up in the last 10–15 pages, with a faint promise of sun. Let's see if I warm up to it.