This has to be the rudest book I have ever read.
Well, not quite. But it is on a subject on which most people are not generally rude. People mock everything, but they are sensitive when it comes to making fun of someone else’s faith. No need to be so – says Dawkins and rambles in an absolutely no holds barred discourse on why there is no God. For me, it was one of the most delightful things I have ever read. I also realized that I am not a skeptic but more technically a de facto atheist. continue reading…
Bihar is an enigma for me. Growing up in Delhi, I thought Bihar is a really poor state where people are dumb and good enough only for menial jobs in the big city. Don’t blame me. I was an impressionable kid who was told that all these rickshawallas are bihari thugs and as a kid I should be careful. Growing up I came across lot of half way and fully educated Biharis. I realized that these people are definitely not dumb. They are cheap, horny, perverted , sly , political minded (hey don’t blame me but this is the sample at least I have come across , I know I should not generalize) but very hard working and sharp ( I emphasize the point, that there may be a sampling error). Now, if Biharis are hard working and sharp and on top of that sly; I could not understand why Bihar remains such a poor state. 
In her philosophical fiction Fountainhead, Howard Roark blows up his building towards the climax. His reasoning is, that it is his and his individual work and he put a price on it that should be designed just the way he wants it and since he was not paid that price, the building can be blown away by him. Similarly Galt and his chosen ones refuse to use their skills and go on strike. It is their talent and they simply refuse to use it. Now I am all in favor of demanding things just the way you like it and refusing to work, by going on strike but what is implied here is, that a person’s intellectual achievement is enitrely his own. 
Some days back , I tried to put forward my immature arguments against the “Philosopher” Ayn Rand (link above). I posted this on orkut forums and it was seen as a publicity stunt by many ( they were not entirely off the mark) but my opinions were honest. They could not see what possible connection did I see in rock stars and Howard Roark. ![Chetan_Bhagat_Anusha_2_States_thumb[2]](http://getupdated.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Chetan_Bhagat_Anusha_2_States_thumb2-150x200.jpg "Chetan_Bhagat_Anusha_2_States_thumb[2]")
Bhagat was in news lately and again for the wrong reasons ( or maybe the right reasons according to his publisher). He demanded 5 lakhs to endorse twitter tweets for some lakme or wills fashion week. Why not – I have quit my job – my books are cheap, why shouldn’t I ( said Chetan). Jesus – he could not even come up with proper choice of words to put forward his point, that if ShahRukh Khan can demand 5 crores to endorse a 5 day event, he can ask atleast 5 lakhs. He should have said some thing, nothing, any thing better than – my books are cheap. So how come someone so awful is so successful.
This book is half the size of Snowball (the other buffett biography). On top of that, it was written some 15 years before Snowball. So I did not expect to up any new insight about Buffett having read Snowball already. Indeed Snowball manages to do a much better job of demystifying Buffett, the writer of snowball would have had used this book among other materials for her research. Snowball makes a more earnest attempt to get to the bottom of the person rather than the businessman. Maybe fifteen years ago Buffett was just a business curiosity and since then has become much more.
I always thought that Indians should be instinctively good at value investing. I mean we love bargains and like to minimize our expenditures. And if there is any community which would be best at value investing it has to be Gujjus. Mohnish Pabrai makes the same point in his book Dhando Investor. Dhando ( dhanda or business) as practiced in Gujarat has always been minimizing the downside risk while retaining the upside potential pretty much what value investing preaches , or so the author claims. 
First things first; this book is about 1000 pages. So, you may think that by completing the mammoth task of finishing this book you will accomplish the mammoth task of understanding Warren Buffett. After all he is a business man and not some complicated artist and Warren himself has always made things easy to understand. But the thing about Warren Buffett is that he is easy to understand for a beginner, but has profound depth that will continue to amaze an “expert”.
I became a big fan of Chetan Bhagat when I first read 5 point someone. He was able to quickly connect to the readers most of them being engineers, I am not sure about rest of them. He tried to address a different set of crowd with one night at call center but that was like leap from reality. Ok, I know FPS had some really no- realistic incidents like falling from roof top and surviving and what not, but still my entertainment starved soul could bear that.
So investment bankers work 100 hours a week and their life is consumed by their work. Analysts don’t analyze anything , associates are not really associated with the deal and basically they are both paying their dues so they get to be senior vice presidents and MD’s some day who are actually the investment bankers. Their work is a drudgery ( at times the most important part of the job is to make sure that the font size is correct) and a whole lot of things, I already knew before I picked up this.Yet, I managed to pick up a lot of wisdom. 
