My Favorite Books of 2016

2016 has been termed by many as the year to forget. It is the year in which right wing populist leaders either came to power or strengthened their power, lives of the minorities in many places were threatened, Syrian crisis further aggravated, income inequality became greater; I won’t list any further events as by now you get the idea of why it was a bad year for the world in general.

While I was following the above stories and feeling sad about how the human race had gone backwards in the last one year, I was also happy for the growth that I achieved personally in the last one year. Many factors have contributed to this, but there is one that I would like to highlight: Books. In the last 2-3 years I had lost the habit of reading. I had not read a book in a long time but I gained the habit back in 2016. I am not quite sure how I found my love for books again. It could have been because I rediscovered my curiosity to understand this complex world better or it could be simply because my Amazon Kindle made it easier for me to browse, buy and start reading a book in an instant. Whatever be the reason, I was happy to be back among books.

Here are 5 of my favorite books that I thoroughly enjoyed reading in 2016:

Too Big to Fail – Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street
Andrew Ross Sorkin

The financial crisis of 2008 never fails to fascinate me. The more I read about it, the more I am surprised as to how this could have been allowed to happen. ‘Too Big to Fail’ starts with the weekend when US regulators stepped in to save Bear Stearns from collapsing by offering JP Morgan a sweet deal to acquire Bear Stearns. The book then takes us through the series of events that ultimately lead to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. What makes this book unique is that Andrew Ross Sorkin interviewed many people who were present in board meetings of Wall Street banks, were involved in conversations with CEOs of these banks or had meetings with high level officials of US Federal Reserve, Treasury Secretary and other regulators. With this information, Sorkin has described what happened in the banks (and AIG of course!) as the crisis was unfolding and gives us some remarkable anecdotes.

Some of the most striking incidents involve Dick Fuld, the then CEO of Lehman Brothers, whose incompetence led him to blow up an almost done deal with Koreans to save Lehman. Also fascinating are the meetings that took place among Wall Street Banks CEOs on the weekend before collapse of Lehman. Everyone recognized that something needs to be done but none of them were willing to do anything without the support of US regulators who did not want to step in fearing a backlash from Congress and the general public for saving another bank. Final nail in the coffin was put when British government blocked Barclays’ move to acquire Lehman.

I might not have read this book had it not been put under suggested readings by my M&A professor at LBS, Dr. Stefan Lewellen. So a big thanks to him.

Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley

Antonio Garcia Martinez

I have never been to Silicon Valley but I have read many articles and stories describing how it is a place of innovation and how the best ideas get developed there. But Antonio Garcia Martinez in this book dispels all the charm and glamour that surrounds Silicon Valley. Martinez was a banker at Goldman Sachs who moved to a start-up in Silicon Valley specializing in online advertising and then went on to start his own company in the online ad space. He sold his company to Twitter for $5 million after just 10 months and went on to work for Facebook. Martinez having such a diverse experience in Silicon Valley tells that working there is same as working on Wall Street or in any other corporate setting. There is no such thing as meritocracy, often times your future is decided by luck and there is a lot of politics and deceit that goes on. This is all serious stuff but way Martinez describes it will leave you in splits.

The book also goes into detail about the online advertising world. Martinez describes how difficult it is to generate revenue through online advertising and elaborates very well the struggle Facebook was going through to monetize its website. He says that people are not willing to pay for online advertising because they feel that ‘Marketing is like sex, only losers pay for it’. There are many such hilarious one-liners and stories in the book that will keep you hooked to it.

This book is a must read for anyone considering a life in Silicon Valley and touch base with the realities of living there.

The Fall of the Ottomans – The Great War in the Middle East, 1914 – 1920
Eugene Rogan

The downfall of the glorious Ottoman Empire came when they lost in First World War fighting alongside Germany. The British and the French thought that the Ottomans were pushovers and would be easy opponents to crush. To their surprise, the Ottomans fought tooth and nail to protect their vast empire in the Middle East and prolonged the war. The British were ultimately successful in defeating the Ottomans in part because they were able to raise rebel leaders in various areas of Middle East promising them autonomy once the war ended. But what these rebels did not know at the time was that the British and the French already had an agreement in place stating the territories each would control after the war. The most shocking part of this agreement was that the territories were divided by simply drawing lines on a map without taking into account the ground realities and people who lived in those areas. This agreement known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement is still cited as one of the prime reasons why Middle East is facing so many problems today.

This book also takes us through the horrific genocide of the Armenian people by the Ottomans, the plight of the soldiers fighting in Gallipoli in what is described as the worst war zone of World War I and the Siege of Kut in Iraq where the British Army consisting of many Indian soldiers faced the most embarrassing defeat at the hands of the Ottomans. Another thing that I found out from the book was that the call for Jihad was prominent even during those times. The rulers in Istanbul declared jihad against the British and French in the hope that the Muslims residing in the colonies would rise up in arms and weaken the colonial empires from within.

This is a fascinating book giving a lot of insight on how things started to go horribly wrong in the Middle East during and after World War I and how it is still struggling to recover and find peace.

Misbehaving – The Making of Behavioral Economics
Richard H. Thaler

Behavioral Economics as field of study was looked down upon by mainstream economists. If somebody wanted to pursue a career in behavioral economics it was considered academic suicide. Then came along Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two psychologists who started challenging mainstream economics with their ‘Prospect Theory’. Lot of the traditional economic theories assume that when people make decisions in their daily lives they have the capability to do complex calculations and come with the optimal solution. But through the ‘Prospect Theory’ Kahneman and Tversky showed that human beings are irrational beings and have biases that influence decision making. This really formed the foundation of Behavioral Economics.

The author of this book Richard Thaler drew influence from Kahneman and Tversky to pursue an academic career in Behavioral Economics. He undertook many studies in a variety of fields. In finance, he disproved the Efficient Market Hypothesis. In sports, he showed the best way an NFL team could pick a team in the draft. In public policy, he proved that people could be nudged in certain ways to take decisions which could be helpful to them in the long run. The book is a compilation of all the interesting work that he has done in the field and how behavioral economics has evolved over the decades. Thaler worked with David Cameron government in Britain to improve public policy through theories of behavioral economics. Same thing was done by Cass Sunstein in the Obama administration.

This book has really increased my interest in behavioral economics, especially behavioral finance. I plan to read more on this subject in 2017.

Born a Crime - Stories from a South African Childhood
Trevor Noah

I first watched ‘The Daily Show with Trevor Noah’ in June 2016 when Brexit happened. Noah’s take on the whole thing was so funny and insightful that I started following him on a regular basis. Trevor Noah through ‘The Daily Show’ became my daily source of comedy. I was intrigued by what this guy had to say and started finding out more about him. First I came across the documentary ‘You Laugh, But It’s True’ which talks about Noah’s difficult journey as a comedian and then I came to know that he is coming out with his autobiography. I was in awe of him because releasing an autobiography at the age of only 32 is insane.

In this book Trevor Noah takes us through his life in apartheid South Africa where it was illegal for him to be born because a black woman and white man getting together to have a child was against the law. Being a mixed race child, it was difficult for his black mother to be seen out with him as she could be arrested and Trevor could be taken to an orphanage. Noah takes us through the many funny and shocking incidents of his childhood. Noah’s understanding of racial issues is amazing and opened my eyes to many different aspects of racism. Domestic violence is another issue that he brings up in his book as he and his mother were victims of it. Noah’s stepfather was a terrifying man who beat up his mother a lot and these beatings took a very violent turn when Noah’s mother was shot in the head.

This is a very honest autobiography by Trevor Noah and is a brilliant story of how against all odds a person can still become successful.

Here’s to more books and more reading in the New Year! Have a great 2017!

YEH DIWALI HOGI TV SOAPS WALI

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Actually it is ‘YEH DIWALI HOGI CUP WALI’, the punchline of Champions League T20. But such was the scenario in my house this diwali that it left me craving for each and every second of action. It was because grandma was home and with her arrived the vitriolic presence of TV soaps at prime time.
Whenever grandma is home, there is always an amiable tussle between cricket and the never ending saas-bahu drama with cricket always ending up on the losing side and me having to watch only when adds are being shown. Even then there is an incessant bickering to change the channel while I try in vain to explain that the amount of advertisements shown in between serials was so much that one can easily squeeze in two Brett Lee overs. And while the drama is on, I try hard to concentrate on the magazine in my hand but eyeballs turn effortlessly in the direction of TV and a few minutes of viewing brings a sardonic laughter inside me. In one scene ladies are discussing their sarees to be worn in that night’s function while I hoped for a messiah to make them realize that they are already dressed and jeweled well enough to attend a wedding.
Watching saas-bahu sagas is like watching a substandard Hindi movie where you can’t wait for ‘The End’ to flash. My mother doesn’t watch them and the praise for that goes to me. As a 9 year old child I had started watching ‘Kyunki Saas…..’ with my mother and I began posing to her vexing questions about why our ideal Indian bahu ‘Tulsi’ was being troubled by her saas. My mother realized the implications the serial was having on me and she has never seen anything like that on TV since.
Daily TV soaps maybe a form of entertainment for majority of households in India but their negative effects on children cannot be disregarded. Small children are adept at learning fast but cannot distinguish between good and bad. TV soaps may be showing both positive as well as negative characters but the villain being more flamboyant catches their eye. Same argument goes with movies but due to the perennial nature of these serials they are everyday hooked to the TV to check out the next move of their intriguing villain. The effect can vary from children enacting the villain to actually carrying out their moves.
So next time you see a small child glued to saas-bahu drama kindly change the channel. And the war between cricket and TV soaps still rages on at my home and I hope that at least for one day cricket wins. I also hope that you had a diwali free of TV serials.

electronic realisation

There are days when you realize that all you study in college is not trash. Today was one of those days for me. Regional Electronics Lab, ONGC, Baroda, has acquired two new multivibrators from a Russian firm ‘Geosvip’. I won’t get much into the technical details but all that this instrument does is to send signals down in the earth and record reflections coming from it and detect oil. It produces an artificial earthquake.
I had committed myself to a non-electronics vacations but my dad insisted me to come and learn something. Very reluctantly I went to the testing site and saw two adjacent white trucks carrying a hell lot of equipment and making ear-splitting noise. Far from them was a blue truck which was the control unit supervising the white trucks.
The one hour insight into the functioning of a multivibrator was far more enriching than any electronics lab I had ever been in the college. And the fact that I could relate somewhat to the college syllabus made me realize that it wasn’t waste after all.
From the shirtless Russian engineers flaunting their muscles and tattoos to feeling the earth shake through the multivibrator brought me to stark reality that becoming a good electronics engineer is a rather uphill task. The amount of hard work they were putting in made me wonder if this was why our electronics department put us under so much pressure to study. One would really have to ask the HOD that but if it is true then there surely are better and productive ways.
Perhaps industrial trips, at least one in each semester is a good way. It would help students clear their notions about why electronics is so tough and why one has to go that extra mile. Electronic applications are not a cakewalk. They are fast changing and evolving and one has to be on their toes to keep pace. At the same time we must understand that the task at hand is interesting and not insurmountable. It may be a lot of hard work but at the end of the accomplishment can bring a lot of satisfaction as I have seen it in the case of my dad.

The premature end of exams and an early start to the Diwali break has left me in a mixed mood. Being in 3^rd year Electronics I start fantasizing the end of exams long before they actually start. I remember the euphoric response of my classmates (and mine too) after the end of 1^st internal exams. The feeling of elation increasing exponentially with passing away of each subject and releasing the excruciating pain endured for a week and a half.

But this time around things took an unexpected turn circumventing three exams and paving way for Diwali vacations. On the second day of exams, just three hours before the paper my roommate told me about the suicide committed by a 1^st year boy and his body being found the previous night. An hour later, when I was half way through practicing a derivation the hostel was rife with rumors about the postponement of exams and soon these rumors turned into reality.

The news of suicide really rattled me and sent me in a state of shock and disbelief. This was something unexpected. But then was it? Imagine a boy coming to study in an unknown city from a faraway village. His parents can’t afford to come with him due to financial condition. He does not know what the college system is, how everything works and maybe he is not the brightest in academics. He feels homesick, he is an introvert, stays withdrawn, does not study well and fails miserably in his first ever college exams. He dreads the approaching second exams and commits suicide.

If this is what caused him to take the extreme step, then certainly it was avoidable. All that the poor guy needed was a lot of emotional support. And this where the seniors come into the frame. The stringent rules enforced to avoid ragging have lead to what even ragging did not lead to. If he had the support of the seniors calming and comforting him, the incident could have been avoided.

I am not trying to justify ragging in any way but some amount of senior-junior interaction must be encouraged by the college. The college authorities have to look after so many 1^st yearites and cannot cater to the emotional needs of each and everyone. But this void can be filled by the seniors whose helping hand can certainly help the college to avoid such an episode.

The Supreme Court law does not even allow interaction with 1^st yearites cutting them out from the rest of the college as if they are a different species from an alien planet. This aspect of the law has to be looked into and a solution needs to be discovered before the situation aggravates.

May the boy’s soul rest in peace.